


You Can Stay With Me For Now

by writergirl8



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Canon Compliant, F/M, Missing Moments, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-20
Updated: 2016-04-20
Packaged: 2018-06-03 08:28:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 21,694
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6603829
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/writergirl8/pseuds/writergirl8
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Stiles and Lydia bridge the gap. </p><p>--- </p><p>  <i> “So you’re going to tell me that you’ve been sitting here, come rain or shine, every day after school believing that the girl sitting across from you isn’t flirting with you at all?” Scott says. </i></p><p>  <i>“It’s Lydia.” </i></p><p>  <i>“And you’d follow her to the end of the planet.”</i></p><p>  <i>“Yeah, so given that, the diner isn’t actually that far.” </i></p>
            </blockquote>





	You Can Stay With Me For Now

**Author's Note:**

> This fic takes place over the hiatus between 5b and 6a. It is my take on Stiles and Lydia trying to grow back the beautiful friendship that the show effectively demolished over the last two seasons. I'm so excited to see where they go next, but this is what I hope is happening off-screen during the months that follow 5b. 
> 
> Thank you so much to Sophii (blackjacktheboss on tumblr), Ashley (reyskywalkerrsolo on tumblr), and Leeann (lumosed on tumblr) for taking the time to pre-read this and catch as many typos as you possibly could. I appreciate all the love you gave me. Also, shout out to everybody I talked to about this while I was writing it, especially Rachel (claryfailchild) and Jade (wellsjahasghost). It was one of those fics that I apparently just really needed to talk out. I love you guys for indulging me. 
> 
> Listening to cheesy 80s diner music while reading this is 100% encouraged.

> Tell me if I know
> 
> _Tell me if I do_
> 
> _Tell me how to fall in love the way you want me to_
> 
> _Cold Coffee— Ed Sheeran_

* * *

 

 

"I'm just saying, technically it's the _town's_ fault that my jeep keeps breaking down, so why shouldn't the town pay for repairs?"

"It's the town's fault?"

Stiles knows it's a long-shot, but the skeptical look that his father is giving him is enough to make him push on, if only to see if he can win this.

"Yeah, you know. It's the town's fault that supernatural creatures keep colliding with my car."

He blinks twice, hopeful.

"And who's fault is it that a supernatural tree keeps calling supernatural creatures into this supernatural town?"

Stiles' eyes slide right, then left, as he utters out an "uhhhh—"

"Thought so," his dad says, letting out a small laugh as he digs through his pocket for cash.

In the early morning light, the wrinkles on his dad's face look more pronounced than usual. But they're also softer when he's relaxed, and right now, sitting against the old, cherry red back of the booth, Stiles' dad doesn't seem quite as tired as he usually does.

That's mainly why Stiles has frequently been putting up with waking up thirty minutes earlier to have breakfast with his dad. It's not like he sleeps much anyways.

"Some coffee to go, Sheriff?" asks their waitress as she passes their table.

"That'd be excellent, Angela," he says, smiling kindly, and she whirls around immediately to grab a to-go cup.

Stiles squints at one of the large menus for a moment before his head snaps up to look at his dad.

"Can I get a hot chocolate?"

He sighs.

"Go."

Stiles scrambles out of the booth, meaning to chase after the waitress, and instead barrels headfirst into an oncoming storm.

"Ow, oh fuck, _ow_ —"

"How can you never see where you're going? It's not like you've got any hair in your eyes."

He startles at the sound of her voice, and rears back slightly so that he can look at her. Lydia is standing in the center of the diner, her hair curled slightly, her face mostly bare except for bright red lips which are currently pursed at him, looking unamused as she glances up from her phone.

"What are you doing here?" Stiles blurts out, and Lydia raises her eyebrows.

"Am I not supposed to be here?"

He realizes his mistake way too late. As per usual.

"No, I just—"

"Sorry, do you _own_ this diner?" She narrows her eyes slightly as her voice gets softer and she nods condescendingly. "Did you want me to leave?"

"Alright," Stiles says, awkwardly ruffling the back of his head. "I'm sorry, okay? I'm just surprised to see you here is all."

For some reason utterly unbeknownst to Stiles, he follows Lydia as she starts moving towards the bakery, her boots clicking loudly against the black and white checkered floor of the diner.

"The line at Starbucks was too long today."

"So naturally you randomly decide to come to the diner that I have been frequenting since I was a kid," Stiles deadpans.

"Because there's a _million_ diners on the way to school from which I could have chosen," Lydia says, not looking at him. "Just a large coffee to go," she adds when the man at the register looks at her questioningly. "Thanks."

She puts her phone in the back pocket of her jeans and roots through her purse in search of money.

"Do you need—?" he starts to ask, because she's been looking through her purse for too long, but she looks up and throws him a glare, coming up with the money and slamming it onto the counter. He startles at the sound, and a moment later a look of guilt smashes itself on Lydia's face just long enough that Stiles can see it before she turns away from him.

"How's Scott doing?" Lydia asks, her words slow and careful. She appears to be inspecting the muffins in the case, but Stiles knows her better than that.

"He's sad," says Stiles simply. "But you know that."

Scott's been talking to Lydia way more often than Stiles has, which is a strange feeling that twists oddly in his stomach. But he's not going to do this. He's not going to be jealous of _Scott_. Not about Lydia.

Except he is, because she's standing right in front of him looking like she'd rather be anywhere else in the world, and Stiles feels like he's being punished for everything he's ever done in his life when Lydia won't look him in the eyes. It's not like it used to be— and maybe it would be better if it was. If she had never looked at him like he was important to her, he probably wouldn't be mourning the loss of her respect right now. But lately she just… hasn't bothered. Hasn't been able to meet his eyes or smile at him or spend any time with him, and he knows that it's his fault. He does. But Stiles has also felt like so many moments in their lives have been reset buttons, and he isn't quite sure why Lydia doesn't feel the same.

He's always hanging out with Scott, so he's not lonely, but he's lonely for Lydia. For nights when she'd sit cross-legged on his bed and call out suggestions for additions to his board and throw a pillow at him whenever he said something particularly stupid. Lydia's aim had always been ridiculously accurate. He's pretty sure she'd bruised him once.

The guy at the register hands Lydia her coffee, and she gives him a terse smile of thanks.

"Well," she says, turning to Stiles as she hitches her purse over her shoulder. "I'll see you at school."

"You gonna— uh— hang out with us in study hall?"

She mashes her lips together, looking from the floor to Stiles.

"Maybe," says Lydia. "Bye, Stiles."

He watches her walk away because it's what he's always done and some things, apparently, are never going to change.

Exhibit A: He will always be in love with Lydia Martin. She will always want nothing to do with him.

Fan-frickin-tastic.

* * *

 

Liam is hanging out with Scott after school today, which means that Stiles has been displaced. It's not that he couldn't be there with the two of them, except he _totally_ couldn't, because between Liam's lovesick moaning about Hayden and Scott's unwillingness to open his goddamn mouth about how upset he is about Kira leaving, Stiles can barely stand to be in the room with one of them, much less both.

And by one of them, he clearly means Liam, because Scott is just being… well. Scott. He's Scott. Stiles is used to it, and in some ways he isn't, because his best friend had changed so fucking fast and sometimes Stiles doesn't remember who either of them used to be. But the point is, today he is off of friend duty, so he gets to sit his ass down at a booth in the diner and hopefully type out three college essays in one swoop.

Never mind the fact that he'd taken way too much adderall in the hopes that he'd actually be able to focus on something other than how terrified he is all the freaking time. Nobody needs to know that except for Stiles. He's just going to sit in this booth, work on his pie, and—

"Hello."

He startles physically, nearly leaping out of his seat when he sees Lydia standing in front of him, her arms crossed over her chest defensively. Her voice had been so small that he almost hadn't recognized it, except of _course_ he had because it's Lydia and he could probably find her if he was stumbling around blindfolded, just as long as her voice sounds the same as it has since they were kids.

"Uh, hey, Lydia," he says, scratching his nose and grimacing at the way his voice sounds forced-casual. "Impatient with Starbucks again?"

"Always," she says dryly.

"Yeah. You know, they're a very infuriating establishment. What with all the… misspellings. Of names. Also, like, what the fuck is up with the way they do the coffee sizes? You know I want a medium, you fucker, don't make me say venti. For the love of—"

"Well, I should go." Lydia cuts him off abruptly, and he stops running his mouth an instant later, feeling like her eyes suddenly have bulletproof glass covering them.

"Yeah, okay," agrees Stiles, bobbing his head too low. The action is so emphasized that it startles even him, and he decides to play it off as ducking over his computer. "Cool. Seeya, then."

"Okay," Lydia says, voice sounding a bit higher than usual. It causes Stiles to snap his head back up quickly, wanting to decipher her expression, but Lydia has already turned around and is walking towards the exit of the diner, her hips swishing as she walks. She pauses a second before she turns around, but it's enough time for Stiles to be able to pretend to be looking at his laptop when Lydia starts to walk back towards him. "Actually, I need to say something."

Stiles looks up.

"Yeah?" he replies, feigning casualness.

"I saw you misspell 'rigid' as 'ridged' three times when I was walking past you and I was wondering if you would let me insult more things about your college essay."

He blinks.

"You want to edit my college essay?"

"No, I want to insult it," Lydia corrects, quickly and firmly.

There's definitely a smile that's starting to tug at the corner of his mouth.

"You wanna edit my essay," he confirms, his voice an odd cross between surprise and wonderment.

"Share the doc with me," Lydia instructs him, sliding across from him in the booth and shoving his shoes off of the the seat with one disdainful look towards him. He straightens all the way up, keeping his feet on his side of the table, as Lydia sticks a hand into her large purse and extracts her laptop with its light turquoise cover.

The waitress comes by as she is logging on.

"Hey, hon. You done with your pie?" she asks Stiles. When she notices Lydia, her eyebrows move upwards. "Aw, I'm sorry, Stiles. I didn't realize you had a friend here. You want anything?"

This time, the question is directed towards Lydia, who looks slightly alarmed to be caught in a booth at a diner with Stiles Stilinski, despite the fact that they have been friends since they were sixteen.

"Um," she says, her eyes flicking over to Stiles.

His heart beats faster as he says,

"Actually, I was wondering if I could get another slice."

The truth is, he doesn't want another piece of pie.

He wants Lydia to stay. He wants to sit at this booth with her and try not to feel awkward as she edits his essay. Or, better yet, he wants them to not be awkward at all. He wants her to tease him, to steal one of his fries, to complain about the fact that he wears too much plaid. He wants to take back the way he touched her in the backseat of his jeep, the way he held her and let her lean against him, because apparently something about that made _this_ happen, and he hates how unsteady Lydia seems around him.

Hates that, despite all this weirdness, sometimes she's the reason he's able to put his feet on the floor in the morning and get himself out of bed.

Lydia swallows hard and tries to clear her throat quietly.

"Do you have pecan?" she asks, voice full of the fake-confidence that he would normally associate with a younger Lydia.

"Sure do," the waitress says. "I'll jump right on that."

She nabs Stiles' plate on her way back to the kitchen, and he means to say thank you but the words get stuck in his throat.

They're silent for several moments. Stiles wonders if Lydia feels as committed to this as he does. After all, they have to sit at this table for an entire slice of pie now. And Lydia always takes these stupidly tiny bites that probably have zero flavor in them because there's basically no particles on them.

He likes this, though. Her hair is a more orange color than the burgundy red of the booth, and the sunlight streaming through the window right next to them illuminates the different shades of red and blond in Lydia's hair. There's black and white checkers on the flooring, and they're almost yellowed with age, but they're still clean. When Stiles was a little kid, he used to jump from black checker to black checker, pretending that the white ones were lava.

The diner is covered in posters from old movies that the owner and his wife likes. He's collected the posters over the years, and sometimes Stiles' dad would get him new ones for Christmas, just because finding the old posters with their fraying edges always seemed exciting when they remembered that there was somebody who would care about them. As a result of years of curation, the walls are plastered with posters that are housed in black and white frames, leaving almost no white space lining the walls. Stiles likes to sit at the booth with the poster for Charade, an old Audrey Hepburn and Cary Grant film that he's actually never seen. But he likes the booth— it's close enough to be able to hear the old jukebox in the back, but far enough that the song doesn't bug him if he doesn't like it. Usually, there's some old 70's or 80's tune being played, and a lot of them remind him of his parents, even if he doesn't necessarily like the actual song.

The silence is broken by Lydia's snort when she opens her email and finds the message about Stiles sharing the doc.

"Seriously? 'College blah blah blah' is the title you decided to go with?"

"It's the first line of my college haiku," replies Stiles, unbothered by her scoffing. "It's supposed to be _ironic_."

"You can't be ironic while you're wearing plaid," Lydia says flatly, her eyes skating quickly back and forth across the computer screen.

When he doesn't reply, Lydia looks up from the document and wordlessly scans his face, her brows pinch towards the middle.

She doesn't ask why he's smiling.

* * *

 

"You realize what time it is, right?"

It's almost off-putting when Lydia looks up and doesn't appear to be at _all_ surprised to see Stiles standing in front of her at a diner at three o'clock in the morning. Except maybe that's his bad for assuming that anything could shock Lydia Martin at this point. Maybe her banshee powers make her more aware of guys with crushes on her sneaking up behind her.

"Ten, right?" she says in a fake high-pitched voice, her eyes sliding innocently to the side as she pouts her lips at the ceiling.

Stiles doesn't actually make the choice to sit across from her in the booth. He just does. And only when she doesn't glare at him does he realize how fucking bold that is.

"Couldn't sleep?" he asks, voice low as he takes in her appearance. She's got her hair pulled back into one long braid that's tickling the crook of her elbow, and he can see her bra strap is pulling taut against her skin because her purple sweater has fallen over her shoulder.

"Nope," she replies, pausing with her pen in mid-air as her eyes scan the page underneath her. When she doesn't look up at him for several moments, Stiles leans sideways on the table, squinting to try to see the title of the book she's writing in. He doesn't catch it until his cheek is resting on the tabletop, and he thinks Lydia might raise the book a little bit to help him out, but he'd much rather think that he's being stealthy.

"Sudoku?" He lets out a laugh, and it causes Lydia to look up at him with indignance on her face.

"Do you have a problem with sudoku?"

"You can't sleep, so you come to a diner at three o'clock in the morning to drink coffee and play sudoku."

"This is _tea_ ," Lydia points out, gesturing to the tea bag that is spilling water onto her saucer. "And, yes. I figured it would be better than being trapped in my house doing nothing."

"God, you're a nerd."

He doesn't mean for it to come out so fondly, but then Lydia is offering the workbook a tiny smile, and Stiles thinks it might be for him rather than the numbers.

"And what are you doing awake?" she asks, penciling in an answer.

"At this point I think sleep would be more of a rarity," admits Stiles, picking at a loose thread on the red booth. "You gotta find something to fill your hours when you're an insomniac who starts to convince yourself that your best friend is dead every time you get too idle." Lydia looks startled as she looks up from the book. Stiles doesn't let her talk. "You know. The usual."

Lydia eyes him in a wary, tired way that tells him that she knows exactly what he's doing. Stiles doesn't mind. Not as long as she doesn't ask him about it— and they never ask. That's become one of their things.

She puts her pen down before she speaks, staring down into her teacup when the words finally leave her mouth.

"I used to wake up and forget that Allison had died."

A jolt of guilt stabs Stiles in the stomach. He wants to feel startled by this admission, but he is always thinking about Allison. Always carrying the weight of her on his shoulders. And he can tell that this piece of information isn't meant to stab the way it does; is meant to be some sort of return offering for the information that he had just given her.

So he smiles in a pained manner and says, "I used to come here as a little kid. With my parents."

Because Lydia doesn't want to talk about Allison. She just doesn't. He _knows_ she doesn't.

Not anymore.

"You must have been the most of annoying little kid in the world," Lydia says, a note of fondness to her voice.

"You tell me," he suggests.

"I don't remember you," Lydia says honestly.

"I remember you."

She rolls her eyes as if to say "of course you do." Instead, she says,

"And?"

"You wore a lot of white tights. You always took the pink markers first. You used to eat a Reese's Peanut Butter Cup every day, until seventh grade, and then you didn't anymore. You started wearing lipstick when your parents got divorced and I didn't know why until we were older."

Lydia looks conflicted.

"Do you know why now?"

"Yeah," Stiles confirms, and he doesn't elaborate.

Lydia mashes her lips together as she thinks.

"You used to cry when teachers said your real name. You'd correct substitute teachers before they could get through it. You'd sulk for the entire class period if it got out before you could stop it."

"See?" He actually brightens, which shouldn't be happening because that memory is intensely humiliating. "The one memory you have of me and I'm being annoying. That's just enough evidence for you to figure out everything you need to know about why one of the waitresses here refuses to let me sit in her section."

Lydia pauses as she raises her teacup to her lips, sending him a look with crinkled eyebrows and soft, happy eyes that contrast the firm set of her mouth. His stomach lurches for no reason. It feels _good_ for no reason.

"Did your mom like this place, or something?"

He's so content that it doesn't even bother him that Lydia's bringing up his mom. She never does— nobody does, really— but it feels right this time. It feels settled.

"It's equally close to both the school and the hospital so. Yeah." Lydia nods definitively, and Stiles knows that he can stop talking, but he doesn't. "They always let me get milkshakes and my mom liked to dip her fries in them, and my dad ate so many fucking burgers it's no wonder he's not allowed to go near red meat anymore. And sometimes, when she was having good days, my dad would grab me from Scott's and we'd all have dinner here. 'Cause the hospital food was complete shit even then."

"Makes you appreciate Melissa having to spend every day there."

"Scott and I used to bring her dinner there all the time, but we… we got too busy." He looks over at Lydia for some sort of absolution; something to tell him that it's okay. Her face is just blank, though, and her eyes suddenly aren't meeting his.

"It's funny how people just become too busy."

Lydia is looking back at her sudoku, which makes Stiles realize that she isn't expecting him to respond to it, or to even know what she's talking about. And that's what makes him speak.

"What are you talking about?"

Because what if it's not what he thinks? What if they're an even bigger mess than he had already realized they were?

"Nothing. Just an offhand comment," she says voice too breezy, but there is nothing breezy about sitting at a diner at three o'clock in the morning and trying to avoid the demons that cannot be drowned out by tea and puzzles and maybe not even each other.

"You're talking about junior year." She doesn't say anything. "About Malia."

"I am _not_ talking about Malia." This time, Lydia's voice is firm. "I'm talking about you."

All of his apologies scramble up at the same time, and, yeah, maybe there's a part of him that is desperate to tell her exactly what his intentions were so that maybe he could understand where exactly they fell apart, and where they are now. But all that comes out is a simple, "Shit, Lydia. I literally didn't think you'd notice" that causes her to look up at the ceiling like she could have told it the answer was going to look like this.

"Well, I did."

"I was trying… trying to—" _to not be in love with you_ "—to not bother you. You know, after everything that happened with Allison, you were—"

"After everything that happened with Allison, I had nobody left to bother me, Stiles," says Lydia sharply.

He realizes that she'd been lonely, and it's startling to him, the idea that Lydia could have felt like she was by herself when she was in a pack full of people who loved her.

Love her.

Stiles leans forward, his fingers lurking near hers on the tabletop.

"So… what you're saying is that you want me to bother you."

For the first time, Lydia looks vulnerable, and it would freak him out if he weren't so intent on making this better. On fixing it somehow, even if it goes slow, even if it hurts, even if the story never ends the way he wants it to.

"I'm saying… I'm saying that I _wanted_ you to bother me. And you didn't."

"So I'm gonna start."

"It's too late."

He refuses to let her heavy tone drag him down. He refuses to take the bait and walk away from her. He refuses to let his own fears get him wormed out of her life.

"Except it's actually not too late because it's only three-thirty and this seems like a perfect time to begin annoying the shit out of you."

"Stiles, I said 'wanted.' Past tense."

"So if you wanted me to bother you then and I didn't know, who's to say you don't want me bothering you now?"

The fact that Lydia doesn't answer, and instead returns to her sudoku following a massive death glare in his direction, is more than enough to make Stiles settle into his seat, steal a bite of her cookie, and rap his knuckles against the tabletop just to see how long it takes until Lydia glares at him again.

* * *

 

The thump of Lydia's backpack against the seat is just enough to alert Stiles to her mood.

"Jesus. Who pissed in your shampoo?"

"Oh, lovely."

"Thank you." He smiles brilliantly at her, and Lydia drops into the seat across from Stiles with a massive groan. "Seriously, though."

"I got into MIT. Early acceptance."

"That's terrible," Stiles deadpans. "You should go punch a baby to restore karmic justice."

"My mom wants me to _go_ ," Lydia says, emphasizing the last word too hard as she digs through her backpack and pulls out a pen. She tilts her head to the side and grabs a napkin from the silver holder at the side of the table, beginning to draw a bright purple eyeball. "She thinks I can just leave Beacon Hills without the entire town falling to shit, and it _pisses_ me off."

Stiles takes her distraction as an opportunity to stare at her eyelashes brushing against her skin and the way the sleeves on her green cardigan are just a little too short, showing off her small wrists. He doesn't know why he never paid attention to her wrists before he was allowed to wrap his fingers around them. They're pretty in a way that he doesn't understand, but it makes his chest hurt, knowing how they fit in his hands.

"I don't want to be that guy, but… are you sure you can't leave the town without everything, ah, 'falling to shit' as you so elegantly put it?"

Lydia's movements falter. She looks critically at the napkin.

"Maybe," she says, speaking to the drawing.

"You don't believe me, do you?"

"You asked a question; you didn't make a statement."

"My question was intended to artfully suggest to you that… well, maybe _you_ don't have to live here forever. Maybe you have the option to get out."

Lydia frowns, looking up.

"Why did you say it like that?"

"Like what?"

"Like… like 'you' was just about me. Not about us. As a whole."

Stiles shrugs.

"Hey, it's the waitress!" he says, waving her over with too much enthusiasm. "Janet, my good friend Lydia here would like a stiff one, please."

"You're no more twenty-one than you were last time you tried that," Janet says, pulling a pen from behind her ear and turning to Lydia. "What'll you actually have, hon?"

"A house salad," responds Lydia. "And earplugs on the side, please."

"Coming right up," says Janet, saluting Lydia as she walks away.

Stiles would feel indignant if the joke hadn't made him feel like his insides were gooey.

"Why do you eat salads?" he asks instead of commenting on Lydia's joke. "They're gross."

"So that I can live up to western standards of beauty," she says without blinking. "Now can we please go back to that thing that just happened that you're trying to avoid?"

"What thing?"

"The thing that you're trying to avoid."

"Huh, I hadn't heard."

"Stiles, where are you going to school?"

"Beacon Hills High School. Thanks for asking."

He winks at her, deflecting. Lydia does not look amused.

"Where are you going to college?"

"Somewhere here," he says, waving his hand around carelessly and shrugging to emphasize it.

"So you're saying that _I_ get to leave, but you can't go to school wherever you want?"

"Well, I _have_ to stay," Stiles says, finally breaking down into frustration. "God, Lydia, what the hell do you expect? I can't just get up and leave."

"Because of the nemeton?"

She whispers the word, leaning towards Stiles because the diner is filled with high school students and buzzing with chatter.

"Yeah, because of the nemeton," Stiles says, voice coming out too harsh for what he's feeling. "But also for… for Scott."

Lydia leans back slowly, adjusting the way her legs are crossed.

"Oh," she says, understanding. "You can't leave him."

"And I know he's not going anywhere."

"Right."

"And it's not like I feel any allegiance to the town, honestly, I fucking hate this place, and I _know_ the tree is our fault, but I would still leave in a second, except—"

"Except Scott never will."

"Exactly."

Her eyes meet his, and he assumes that Lydia is thinking about something because her eyes don't seem quite focused— it doesn't seem quite _right_.

"And you're staying because there's someone here who makes you not want to leave."

She speaks slowly, with concentration, and that's what causes Stiles' heart to beat a little bit faster underneath his white t-shirt.

"Yeah," he says, eyes not leaving Lydia's pale face. He wants to fidget, because that comes naturally, but he can't bring himself to move any part of his body. "Any chance that might be the reason you got mad at your mom?"

He hadn't thought that at first, but Lydia looks like she's been honestly, genuinely spooked, and that's what makes him say it. He knows he's going to regret it. There's no way this ends well for him.

Except she had looked at him with eyes that had just opened up again, and their hands were clasped together, and she had been _smiling_ and she had been alive and everything had clicked into place in that moment— he had thought that Lydia, maybe, had been taking in his face just as much as he had been drinking in hers. And she hadn't stopped looking at him. She hadn't stopped smiling at him.

"Maybe," Lydia says. It's so non-committal that Stiles wants to fucking slam his fist into a wall. She isn't giving him anything in either direction. He doesn't know what to do. He doesn't know how long he can keep tucking the words down.

He's tired of wondering if there's a chance that Lydia feels the way he feels about her. He's ravenous for something factual to sink his teeth into, but judging by the vacant smile that's barely on Lydia's face, he doubts he's going to get it anytime soon.

It's probably a good thing that she's guarding herself around him. It's not like he's never hurt her before. But what he wants to know is if he's ever hurt her the way she's hurt him.

" _Stiles saved me_."

"Well, just for the record," he says, rubbing at the back of his head to get the tension out of his body. "I think you should go."

"You do."

"Yeah."

"Okay."

He pauses, not sure if he's supposed to say it. Then he sees her eyes flick down to her hands on the tabletop, avoiding his.

Oh, screw it.

"But it's not like I want you to."

"You don't?"

Lydia looks up, clearly surprised by this.

"Naw," he says, shrugging it off like it's nothing even though his heart is hammering in his chest a little too enthusiastically. "I don't think I can really picture this town without you in it."

He can't picture himself without Lydia in his life. Who he'd be. How he'd think. And that's really what he means to say, but it gets lost among all the other words that he doesn't think he's allowed to speak.

It feels, suddenly, like they're trapped. Sitting at this table, in this diner, in this town. Together. They're trapped.

And in this case, Stiles thinks he's afraid to get over the claustrophobia of it all.

* * *

 

Stiles doesn't exactly know how he and Lydia arrive at the diner at the same time.

There's no way she'd been behind him when they were driving from school— he would have noticed. Nevertheless, she pulls into the spot next to him, and he sees her eyes flicker towards his car once or twice, but she never allows them to linger on it for too long, instead choosing to flip down her visor and rub on some more lip gloss in the mirror. He isn't sure if this is his cue to get out of the jeep and walk into the diner first, but if it is, Stiles catches on too late. Lydia smacks her lips, flips up the visor, and opens the door of her car.

He scrambles out of the driver's seat of the jeep quickly, way too desperate to be near her.

"Hey, Lydia!" he says, raising his hand in an wave before he realizes how awkward it is that he's waving at a girl who he spends every day with in study hall and at lunch. Are you supposed to wave at people who kissed you to stop your panic attack once?

He pauses, suddenly recalling the fact that Lydia had _kissed_ him once.

Whoa.

Okay. Yeah. He definitely isn't going to be obsessing over that particular detail for several hours.

(Except he is, because there's a reason why he doesn't think about it every moment of every day, and Lydia's recently glossed lips are not helping anything right now, god fucking damn it.)

"Fancy meeting you here," she responds, voice wry. They've been coming here almost every day for the past few weeks, and Stiles suddenly cannot imagine a single goddamn day without sitting at a booth with Lydia at this diner.

"Did you take a shortcut?" asks Stiles.

"I cut through Turkey Hill," Lydia tells him as he opens the door for her. He realizes too late that he'd put his hand on her back when he was following her through, but Lydia doesn't seem to find it odd, instead choosing to walk ahead of him to get to the table they usually sit at. "Did you write down the history homework?"

"Uh, no," Stiles admits, sitting down in the plush red booth. "I was sorta hoping you did."

"And what video were you watching on your phone instead of paying attention in class?"

He looks over at her in surprise as she pulls out her math notebook, her English notebook, and her history notebook at the same time, throwing the latter at him.

"How'd you know I was watching something?"

"Has subtlety ever been your strong suit?"

Has noticing him ever been hers, though?

"Bob's Burgers," Stiles tells her, opening up the history notebook and leafing through until he finds the freshest page, where Lydia has written their assignment in neat handwriting.

"It's kind of a miracle that I can read your handwriting," he says, shaking his head and showing her the page, filled with rows of neat, precise handwriting. "Seriously, Lydia, this is a mess."

"You know, what _I_ think is impressive is that you have handwriting as terrible as a doctor's but you never actually had to go to medschool."

"It's all a part of my masculine charm."

Their waitress today is new, so Stiles doesn't know her name, and he decides that he hates her in two seconds flat when her eyes linger way too long on Lydia's form as she sweeps her hair off of her neck and clips it back into a bun.

"Uh, hi," says the waitress, a little breathlessly. "Can I take… your order?"

"Loaded waffle fries," Stiles says, trying and failing not to sound too grumpy because she is way too pretty for him to compete with.

"Could I have an espresso? Thanks."

Lydia barely makes eye contact with the waitress, and Stiles doesn't know why he feels both jealous and victorious because Lydia is definitely not his girlfriend and, seriously, he needs to focus on his history homework instead of worrying about Lydia starting to date somebody else.

" _Stiles saved me_."

Fuck.

"You're still drawing trees," he says, more to Lydia's notes than to Lydia.

She's wrinkling her nose at something on her math worksheet, but she pauses when he says that. Slowly readjusts her positioning so that her legs are crossed underneath herself, and looks up at Stiles with a thoughtful expression on her face.

"It's still so instinctive," she admits, moving her wrist to the corner of the page and beginning to sketch out the nemeton. "It's like there's something about the tree that's just… intrinsic. Inside of me."

"Maybe you're drawn to it like Parrish was," Stiles suggests.

"I guess that's a possibility."

He feels a little disappointed that she doesn't do that thing where her eyes spark to life and her lips part in excitement, but whatever. That's fine. He'll keep trying. Cool.

"Could be muscle memory too."

Lydia tilts her head to the side and sweeps her eyes over the drawing, scrutinizing it carefully.

"Sometimes I think it means that I'm stuck."

"Stuck?"

"In junior year. When everything was… better. Felt better."

"You're more in control now. And you're also more powerful."

"I like being powerful," admits Lydia. "But I like Allison better."

"Shit, I'm sorry, I didn't mean to—"

"You framed it once." She looks up at him, eyes oddly calm. "You framed my drawing."

Stiles swallows.

"How did you know that?"

"Do you still have it in your bedside table?"

He wants to lie, but instead he nods wordlessly. He doesn't say that he had been able to keep it there while he was dating Malia because it had been from another lifetime. Another lifetime in which Lydia sat on his bed in leather skirts and let him untangle yarn from her fingertips. And Malia had blessedly never been a part of that particular life. Sometimes he thinks that's one of the reasons he liked her so much.

She didn't know the before, or mourn it. She had just sat next to him and let him lick his wounds closed— maybe she'd even closed some of them for him.

But the picture is still in his bedside table, and the idea of getting rid of it used to make Stiles' body clench with fear and guilt and anxiety. Then Malia had stopped sleeping in his bed and Lydia had been trapped in Eichen House and he had stopped feeling guilty when he looked at it. He still isn't sure if that's a good thing or not.

"I like it, I guess."

"You like trees."

Her voice is skeptical, but her face is serious as it catalogues his expressions carefully .

"I like…" _You_. "I like thinking about the lives we saved because of that one drawing. I like looking at it and knowing that, if it weren't for you, people would be dead. But your hunches are always right."

"Not always, it seems," she says, unable to hold his gaze.

"I can't think of even _one_ time—"

"Junior year," Lydia says shortly. "The night you went missing."

"What are you—?"

"I thought you were… I thought you were in Eichen House, Stiles. I lead everyone to a mental institution."

He feels completely dumbfounded as he stares at her.

"You thought I was in Eichen?"

"In the basement."

"You thought I was in the basement of Eichen," he repeats, wanting to make sure he has it right. Lydia looks a little annoyed.

"Yes, Stiles."

"Lydia, that's—" Fuck, how does he say this without sounding totally crazy? "That's where I was in my _head_."

"Your—?"

"In my head, I was in the basement of Eichen. With the nogitsune."

"So you're saying that I didn't go to the physical location you were in, but instead lead everyone to where you were dreaming you were?"

"I'm actually pretty sure that is what I'm saying."

Lydia breathes out lengthily.

"Do you ever think about how there's so much we—"

"—Don't know? About the supernatural?" She nods. "Yeah."

"Maybe we haven't even scratched the surface."

It's a harrowing thought, mostly because they don't know what they're going to be facing tomorrow and they also don't know what they're going to need to know to figure it out. For something else to do, Stiles checks the completed problems on Lydia's mathsheet.

"Well, for your sake, I hope you never have to know about any of my other dreams," he settles on.

"I hope that's for your sake too," Lydia says, looking like she's trying not to smile. "I mean, isn't that kind of embarrassing?"

Stiles looks stricken.

"I didn't even think about that."

Lydia smiles in a way that reminds him of Allison for a second.

"That's nice of you. You're far too worried about me getting scarred for life by your dreams to even think about the fact that I would probably judge you forever for them."

"Oh yeah. You'd never survive a trip through my fucked up mind," he mocks, because she literally has, and in this moment there's something hilariously funny about that. "Speaking of fucked up," he adds, tapping Lydia's math worksheet with the back of his pencil, "you got number three wrong."

She checks her work, makes a noise of surprise, and is still staring at him in a mixture of what he would define as resentment and probably awe when the waitress arrives with her espresso.

It's kinda nice to think that Lydia can resent him for simple stuff as well as the more fucked up matters of their life together.

* * *

 

The guilt that comes with having a sex dream about Lydia makes Stiles about eight times clumsier the day after. He nearly walks into his own locker when he sees her in the morning at school, and he contemplates skipping the diner for the first time since they had made it a pattern. But the idea of not seeing Lydia after school— and, worse, Lydia thinking he doesn't want to see her— causes Stiles to take the turn he needs to go to the diner instead of going all the way home like his instinct tells him to.

The dumbest decision he makes that day is to order soup, because Lydia stretches and moans when she finally finishes reading the assigned pages from her history textbook. He spills soup all down his front, swears loudly, and leaps out of the booth to make a mad dash for the bathroom, leaving Lydia staring after him in confusion.

It's weird, because he just hasn't dreamed about her like that for a while. He dreams about her frequently, but they're usually talking or hanging out or in a relationship. It's not _dirty_. It doesn't make him look at her the next day and remember the flush on her chest and the pretty sounds she'd made and the way her hair had looked cascading down her bare back.

He's been kissing Lydia in dreams since middle school, but dreams like that had stopped when she had gotten put in Eichen. Suddenly, most of his dreams were about her being safe. It would have felt wrong to dream about her sexually when she was trapped in a coma, so Stiles is glad that his subconscious had gotten the message.

But then last night he'd dreamed about fucking her against his bedroom wall so. Yeah. There's that.

"Is something wrong?" Lydia asks him when he gets back from the bathroom, still covered in soup. He'd taken off his flannel, which had taken the biggest hit, and a spike of arousal surges through him when Lydia's eyes linger on his biceps for too long.

 _Fuck_. Now he's seeing things.

"Just didn't get a lot of sleep last night," Stiles lies, sitting back down at the booth.

"You never get any sleep."

"Stop quizzing me or I'm going to start singing Shoop again."

Lydia's eyes widen, annoyed enough to back off.

"Wow, fine. I'll never question you again when you spill food all over yourself. You're on your own."

"Thank you," says Stiles, stately. Lydia refocuses on her notes.

"By the way, you have powdered sugar in your hair," she adds without looking back up at him.

"Motherfucker," Stiles groans, marching back to the bathroom.

* * *

 

Scott is looking at Stiles with such intense sympathy that Stiles isn't sure if he has anything to compare it to in their lifetime of friendship. There's a stopwatch clutched firmly in Scott's hand as he hovers above Stiles and Lydia, his left hand braced on the table, eyes flicking back and forth between the two of them.

"Are you _sure_ you want to do this?" he asks Stiles, because they've been through this several times already and even Stiles doesn't know how much more heartbreak Scott can take.

"Look, Scotty, I can do this."

"You can't do this," Lydia says flatly.

"Alright, shut it, you. You with your negative… negativity."

"Oh, I'm not being negative," Lydia says calmly. "I'm being realistic."

"She is being realistic," Scott admits, straightening up so that he's no longer hunched over the table like he's ready to pounce.

"I can _do_ this," says Stiles, clutching his pencil harder in his hand. "Come on, guys. Just one more time."

"Stiles," complains Scott, finally sliding back into the booth next to Stiles. "Seriously. Just stop. There's no way you're going to be able to beat Lydia at a math puzzle."

"What if we injected her with some kanima venom?"

"That's cheating," Scott replies, scandalized.

"So? I'd still win."

"Out of curiosity, where are we going to get kanima venom to poison me with so that you can cheat?"

"I'm sure Deaton has some." Stiles waves his hand dismissively.

"That's for emergencies," Scott reminds him almost scoldingly.

"This is _definitely_ an emergency. Lydia is better at something than I am!"

Lydia puts her pencil down on the table and reaches for her white coffee cup.

"Stiles, I'm better than you at _most_ things," she informs him before taking a sip of coffee that leaves a red lipstick stain on the lip of the cup.

"You're probably not better than me at League of Legends."

" _That_ you can have," says Lydia.

"Scott, come on, press the timey button thingy."

"It is probably relevant to say in this moment that I am also better than Stiles at knowing nouns."

"Oh, fuck off."

"Bite me."

"Alright, nobody's biting _anyone_ ," Scott says, voice rising above theirs. "Stiles is on a ten year no biting kick, and I, for one, could not be happier about the progress he's made since he was seven."

"Thanks, buddy."

"Look, are we doing this or not?" Lydia asks, wiggling her pencil in Stiles' face as he takes a large bite of reuben. "I need to know if I should go fix my makeup now to give Stiles a sixty second start to prove that I can kick his ass regardless."

"Oh, let's _go_!"

Scott sighs a long-suffering sigh and presses the timey button thingy as though it is a painful endeavor for his thumb. Stiles flips over his paper and begins scribbling furiously on it, his fingers struggling to catch up to his brain. He gets lost in the puzzle, in the numbers that fly across the page, and when he finishes and looks up in triumph, he truly isn't expecting to see Lydia blowing bubbles in her water glass with her straw, looking bored.

"How much faster was she?" asks Stiles, not wanting to hear the answer. Scott pats him on the shoulder sadly with one hand and fist bumps Lydia with the other.

"Just a smidge."

"More like eight smidges," Lydia notes, stirring her straw with her finger.

"How exactly do you quantify a smidge?" Stiles asks. When she glares, he continues. "Is it more or less then a titch?"

"More than a titch, less than a touch."

Scott groans, letting his head fall against the top of the table.

"I need more pie," he decides, murmuring it into the laminated placemat that he has landed on.

"How much more pie?" Stiles asks.

"A smidge?" Lydia questions, catching on.

Scott is up from the table in a flash, off to look for the waitress with one final grimace at the two of them for their antics.

"That was _good_ ," Stiles says quietly, as soon as Scott has begun to engage with the waitress. "Wasn't that good?"

Lydia picks up the menu and hides behind as it as she attempts to sneakily observe Scott, who is talking animatedly, waving his hands and smiling widely.

"He definitely did seem distracted."

"And like he probably doesn't know that we're distracting him."

"He's not an idiot, Stiles. He'll figure it out eventually."

They've been at the diner for four hours, and multiple empty plates are strewn across the table. Stiles would regret the fact that he'd spent his allowance on two orders of fries, but he knows that it's more than that. They're doing this for Scott. Because Scott will sit alone in his room if they forget to ask him to come to the diner with them. Because sometimes Scott _wants_ to sit alone in his room, and Stiles doesn't know which one is worse, even though he gets it.

As great it is that he also hangs out with Malia and Liam and works a lot after school, Stiles thinks that maybe it feels best for Scott when it's just the three of them, hanging out together. They don't need to voice the fears and losses that are between them because all three of them know that they're there. It feels good to spend time with what they've lost but not be defined by it.

"But it's Scott. So as soon as he figures it out, he'll probably just be grateful that we remembered to distract him at all."

Lydia laughs through her nose, and it sounds sad, but Stiles understand the look on her face well enough to know what it is.

"Maybe I should set him up with someone."

"He's not ready," Stiles says immediately. "I mean, shit, he's barely been single since sophomore year. Maybe he needs time to be by himself."

Lydia looks up at the ceiling.

"Are you doing that friend thing where you pretend to talk about someone else while you're really talking about yourself?"

" _No_ ," Stiles says emphatically. "I just don't think Scott's ready to date again."

"Aren't you worried that if he stops he's going to… overthink it? I don't want him to wait too long and then get in his own head. Make everything more complicated than it has to be."

"What's not complicated about being a werewolf?"

"The part that's about being human."

He watches her, fingers itchy with the need to hold her hand, to touch her face, to tell her how grateful he is that she's sitting in front of him talking him like this.

"Kira gave him one of her tails," says Stiles, voice muted. "She gave him a piece of her life, Lydia. You don't just… move on. It's too hard." Lydia blinks at him. "You don't just move on," Stiles says again, more firmly this time.

Lydia breathes out slowly, glancing over to Scott. He catches her staring and waves, seeming happy for the moment.

"So we protect him," she says, turning back to Stiles. "We keep on protecting him."

The look that the two of them share finishes the statement for her: We protect him like he has always protected us.

* * *

 

"I don't know what I want."

"That's for damn sure," mutters Lydia under her breath, causing Stiles to peek over his menu at her with furrowed brows.

"Something to share with the class?"

"No," she says, smiling brightly at him. "You keep doing this. This is going _great_."

He shoots her a sarcastic grimace that he hopes comes across meaner than he feels, because he's confused by her words and confused by what she's not saying and he wants her to be _clear_ instead of being in the obviously terrible mood that she's in.

"Strawberry milkshake," Stiles decides a few moments later, which only serves to cause Lydia to trill her lips in a sarcastic, annoyed manner as she continues to peruse the menu. "Okay, seriously, what is up with you today?"

"Absolutely nothing. Do you think the peanut butter and jelly milkshakes are any good?"

"You just stay away from nuts when you're in a mood like this, Lydia Martin."

They both pause, trying to gauge how they feel about the fact that he'd just made a joke about nuts when they both so carefully avoid talking about sex around each other. For a moment, it's a terribly loaded pause during which Stiles can feel his cheeks exploding with red and Lydia's mouth is open without a sound coming from it. Then she looks down at the menu, a small smile on her lips.

"Nonsense. Moods like these are exactly why I bought my collapsable nutcracker." When she sees him wince, she adds, "You know, it's small enough to fit in my purse."

He lets out a quiet laugh that makes his whole body jerk forward involuntarily, and the result of this is Stiles nudging Lydia softly with his foot, an action that probably reads just as tender as it is. She clucks her tongue, still smiling, and when the waitress comes by, she makes sure to order a peanut butter milkshake.

"Do you want me to edit your English paper?" Stiles asks, noticing that Lydia has a completed draft of her paper sitting on the table next to her.

"Have you written your own yet?" she asks knowingly.

"I wanna read yours so I know just how good mine has to be before I officially kick your ass."

With a smirk, she picks up her essay between two fingers and drops it onto the table in front of Stiles, throwing a green pen at him as he starts to gobble up what she's written about _The Tempest_. It's not that it's a particularly interesting play, but he's always liked reading Lydia's writing. It's easy, when he's looking at her papers, to tell exactly how much she dumbs herself down when she's speaking to them. It's not that she pretends to be stupid anymore, but she also doesn't make use of her whole vocabulary, and Stiles is fascinated by this. Fascinated by the idea of anything that Lydia Martin says or thinks, really, and that's why he's reading her essay.

"Did you fill out your common app yet?" she asks when he's about halfway through the paper. To be honest, Stiles is surprised they actually went this long without speaking. It's a little unusual.

"No, but I made Scott fill out his, so that's, like, fifty-percent of the battle."

"Scott is clearly the better of the two of you with procrastination, so I'm genuinely curious to hear how you arrived at that conclusion."

"If he's already done his, I've completed my friend tasks and can now solely focus on my application."

"Which is why you're reading my English paper."

"Which is why I'm— oh, yeah, I see what you did there."

Lydia snatches the paper out of his hands.

"Pull out your laptop and just do it, Stiles."

"Okay. _Or_ —"

"What now," Lydia asks, getting exasperated. "What is it, Stiles? Is it too easy? Is it too simple now that nobody's been trying to kill us lately?"

He closes his mouth, then opens it again.

"Is your bad mood making you more exasperated than your usual setting, or—?"

" _Stiles_!"

"Look, it's… it's weird to think about, okay? It's weird to think about my dad living in my— our— house by himself and having nobody to bug him about his eating habits and… and I don't like that he's gonna have to come home to an empty house all the time. I feel like he did that enough when I was living with him."

It's so fucking _good_ to get it all out; to say why he's guilty. Makes him want to talk to her about the other stuff that he's guilty about, too, and then just hope that she takes it all away, if only for a moment.

"Are you done being an idiotic asshole?"

Or not.

"Lydia, _jeez_ , baring my soul here."

"That's not your soul," she says flatly. "That's you standing in your own way. There's nothing special about this, Stiles. Everybody leaves home eventually. Every parent has to say goodbye to their kid. And wherever you go, your dad is going to be so proud of you just for getting there. So stop being a shit and fill out your common app."

"Grumpy Lydia is _mean_."

"This isn't grumpy Lydia!" she says as the waitress comes back with their milkshakes. "Eloise, tell him I'm not grumpy."

"Uh?"

"Or at least tell him that he should stop getting in his own way."

"Stop getting in your own way," says Eloise, flicking her eyes emphatically towards Lydia at the end of the sentence. Stiles pretends not to notice this.

"Fine!" Stiles says as he shoves open his laptop and furiously punches in his password. "But Lydia?"

"What."

"You should know that your contact name in my phone is Screamy McScreamerson."

"Um, what?"

"You heard me."

She looks horrified, which is just the desired effect, so Stiles smiles smugly at her as he types in the web address for common app, not needing to look at the keyboard as he does it.

" _Why_?"

"Because you scream a lot."

"Well… well _change_ it!"

"No."

"Stiles!"

"Nope."

"Well then I'm changing your contact name to your _real_ name. How do you like that?"

Oh god no. No. _No_.

"I don't care at all," he lies. "Go ahead and do it."

"Really?"

"Do whatever you want, Screamy McScreamerson."

"You're just…"

"Infuriating?" he asks, grinning at her in a way that he suspects is extremely handsome.

"Ugh," Lydia groans in response. "That just about covers it, actually."

Stiles takes a victory lap around the diner because he _never_ gets to win an argument with Lydia. And if it's an argument about just how infuriating he is? Fine. He'll take it.

* * *

 

Lydia's cheeks are practically glowing with color as she sits across from Stiles in the booth. Her legs are crossed, her hair is tossed into a careful ponytail, and her eyes seem to have made it their duty to look as hardened as they possibly can. He _hates_ when she gets like this, because it makes it hard to focus when she's yelling at him, and what's worse is that he knows he's _right_ this time.

She's not going to win this. There's no fucking way.

"You're wrong, okay?"

"No, _you're_ wrong!"

"That is bullshit and you know it, Lydia."

"Stiles, how could you even—?"

"I can't hear you over the idiocy of your opinions."

She throws her hands into the air in an involuntarily exasperated action.

"At least my opinions are better than yours, which are garbage, Stiles. They're garbage."

"You know what else is garbage? Key lime pie!"

"It's _not!_ It's refreshing and delicious!"

"It's bullshit pie, Lydia, that's what key lime pie is."

She lets out a frustrated scream.

"And you know what apple pie is? It's _boring_. Everybody likes apple pie, it's like saying that your favorite type of music is the kind with instruments. Everybody likes music with instruments! It's one of those universally liked things!"

"Some people don't like music at all, Lydia, and apple pie is fucking delicious. It's a goddamn classic— look, it's good hot, it's good cold, you can put fuckin' ice cream on it, you can put _cheese_ on it—"

"Who the _fuck_ puts cheese on apple pie?"

"Laura Ingalls Wilder did it in Little House On the Prairie."

"Does anybody do it nowadays?"

"I can. Right now. Get me cheese."

She looks so skeptical, and so pretty with the afternoon light from the window right next to her causing her eyelashes to leave long shadows on her cheek. And there's something bright and happy about all of it, like their eyes are meeting in this moment of _okay_ that they are sharing between the two of them. It feels like healing, talking to her this way. It feels like he could keep fighting with her about pie until the world stopped turning because Lydia is trying too hard not to smile and it makes Stiles want to get rid of anything that could stop this moment from being as perfect as it is. If they're going to make moments like this again, he doesn't want anything to be thrown between the two of them. He doesn't want anything ready to detonate.

"Lydia, it's my fault that Donovan's dead."

The smile slips off of Lydia's face, and she stares at him, eyes wide and unblinking.

"I… _what_?"

"I killed him," Stiles tells her, trying to keep shame from coloring his tone. Lydia should be allowed to say what she needs to say without feeling bad about making him feel worse than he already does. He's actually a little surprised she's still sitting at the table with him, because he's half expecting her to get up and walk out the door.

But Lydia blinks. Once. Twice. Three times. And then she says, "You had no choice." It's flat, like she knows.

"Do you even know what happened?"

"No."

"So why would you just… assume that?"

"Because there's a difference between someone who's killed someone and someone who's a murderer. You're not a murderer."

His mouth quirks up.

"Well, that's the thing," he says, voice rough. His eyebrows twitch down momentarily. "I sorta am."

Lydia shakes her head emphatically, eyes not meeting his.

"What happened."

He doesn't see her _move_ the entire time he tells the story. There's a part of him that becomes locked in on the way her body shifts with her breaths, because the rest of her is blank. It's like telling the story to a wall, except it's Lydia. It's the girl he's fallen in love with too many times over. He's telling the story to the stars and the sky and moon, and the fact that she has the power to make all of it go dark is the thing that makes Stiles' voice shake as he speaks.

Lydia pauses for so long that Stiles' heart begins to speed up just at the dozens of different scenarios that are going on in his head. There's a million things she could be thinking now, and he could have ruined everything. He could have just ruined his own goddamn life, and lost her friendship, and maybe this is _just_ the shade of dark he would have to be for her to not be able to see his colors anymore.

By the time she speaks, Stiles is so ravenous for her voice that he thinks it might be too late for anything she says to even be able to fix him.

"He was trying to kill you."

It's an easy statement to rebuke.

"He was trying to kill my dad."

"He was trying to kill _you_."

This time, Lydia's voice is hard as her eyes snap to Stiles' face, raking over it with a ferocity that he is unaccustomed to seeing on her. After all the fucked up shit that's happened to her, she is still _this_. She is stronger for it. Whereas, Stiles? He'd just broken down. He'd broken down and thrown a wrench into his own windshield.

"I couldn't live with myself if he'd gotten my dad."

"I couldn't have forgiven you if you'd let him get you."

It's like she's holding up a mirror on him and reflecting everything he says back to him, and on one end, it stings to have to look at it like that. The other side, though, feels like caring. Like she's protecting him as much as she can from the boy whose reflection has been staring back at him since he'd killed Donovan.

"I murdered someone."

"I know," she says, and she looks pained for the first time. "And you're not the same. And you're damaged. And you're angry all the time."

He nods.

"Yeah."

"So am I. But, Stiles?" She hesitates for a second, then lifts a hand from her lap and reaches across the table to touch his fingers with hers. "You had no choice."

"It wasn't an accident, Lydia. I grabbed that screw, I pulled it loose."

"I'm not saying that it was an accident. I'm saying you had no choice."

He pulls his hand away from hers, overwhelmed by the intensity of her eyes on his. It feels like she's burning away some of the shame, absolving him, and he doesn't want to be absolved. He wants to soak himself in this until it fills his lungs, because he lost something. He is irretrievable.

"Donovan. He had a dad. He had a dad who loved him."

"So do you."

"Allison's dad loved her." When he looks up again, he's satisfied to see that Lydia looks like his words have hit her in the chest. He keeps going. "Allison's dad loved her and then I killed her, just like I killed Donovan. I _killed_ them."

There's a long pause during which neither of them moves or speaks. Then Lydia slides slowly to the edge of her booth, stands up, and sits back down in the seat next to Stiles. Her shoulder presses into his as she sits stiffly next to him, and he knows that she's unsure of what to do because her fingers are gripping each other, nails digging into her hands.

"You didn't kill Allison," says Lydia, voice measured.

"I did."

"You didn't."

She's sitting next to him wearing the perfume that he's been familiar with since his head had bent low into her neck at a school dance, nudging against the warm skin there. She's smaller than he is, in stature only. She's wearing the same shirt she'd worn on the day that she'd told him he was the one who could figure it out.

There's something about her shoulder against his that makes Stiles feel like a teenager again. He feels like a _kid_. Like someone who could have a crush on a girl and take her to a school dance and let her drag him places he doesn't want to go because really it doesn't matter where he is as long as she's right next to him.

"I'm the reason she's dead, Lydia."

The thing is, the time to do all of those pieced-together things is gone. He's the one who had shattered their chances.

"I know."

He looks down at her, meeting her eyes, and when she looks up at him, the desperate look on her face makes him realize that she knows exactly where the lines are blurred. She knows what he's thinking, what he sees. And she's still sitting in this booth.

Next to him, Lydia shifts over slightly, and for a moment, he thinks she's going to leave. Then she leans her head against his shoulder, her hand finding his and squeezing it.

Stiles allows himself to be hopeful when she rolls her head to the side slightly, so that her forehead is flat on his shoulder, just for a moment.

 _I shattered our chances_ , he thinks when he sees that Lydia has her eyes closed. _Okay. I shattered our chances. So we make a mosaic._

Lydia doesn't move for a long time.

* * *

 

There's an old jukebox in the corner of the diner, and Stiles has too many memories of crowding around it with Scott, putting in nickels and trying to play the most annoying songs possible. The two of them used to shove each other over obnoxiously, kicking each other's feet and laughing too loud when one of them almost fell down. When they were kids, they would come here to talk about girls and to complain about teachers. They'd sit in a booth and spend hours there to distract themselves from things that seemed important at the time but now feel petty and stupid and are tinted with nostalgia that is the color of double bubble and smells like axe body spray.

Right now, Lydia Martin is sitting in a booth with Scott. She's one of the things Stiles had always been distracting himself from, and now she's here _with_ them. And, somehow, this place has become more Stiles' and Lydia's than Scott's and Stiles'. He doesn't even know how it happened— how it came to be that it's odd to see Scott here now, because Scott doesn't quite fit with study sessions at two in the morning, or with the memory of the night Lydia spent thirty minutes kicking Stiles' seat until he admitted that plaid is ugly.

But instead of flipping through songs on the jukebox, Stiles is just watching the two of them talk, and there's something incredible about the whole thing. Something that makes his chest thump with everything that is good about today, and yesterday, and somehow all of it doesn't seem as ugly as it did before they walked into this diner together. So he flips to a Duran Duran song that he knows Scott hates because his mom played it too much when he was a kid, and Stiles dances his way back over to the table.

"Are you _sure_ you don't want me to come with you?" Scott is saying to Lydia as Stiles approaches.

"Of course I don't. I'll be fine," Lydia says, in a voice that makes Stiles think it's not the first time she's said it.

"Seriously, Lydia, it's not fun."

"I will be _fine_ , Scott. I've handled far worse. And I don't need anybody seeing me when I'm like that."

"Seeing you like what?" Stiles asks, plopping into the seat next to Lydia and cutting a sidelong glance at her.

"Nothing," she says airily. "Anybody want to split the, um, onion rings?"

"You hate onions," Stiles says flatly. "Nice try though."

Lydia throws him a glare that seems comically similar to a pout, not that Stiles would ever suggest that to her. Scott tries not to laugh as Stiles scrunches his nose back at her and sticks out his tongue, which just makes Lydia's pout morph into a look of fury. Stiles is pretty sure she could send him to hell just with that glare.

"So, um," Scott says, clearing his throat, and they turn away from each other to look at him. "Did I tell you guys that Liam, Mason, and Malia got kicked out of the library today?"

"How did they manage that?" Lydia asks disdainfully.

"How did they manage _that_?" Stiles questions excitedly.

Scott, in a rare moment of weakness, looks like he wants to slap both of them in the face.

"Mason asked Malia if she thought her teeth were strong enough to eat a hardcover book with minimal pain, and when Malia said she thought they were—"

"Oh god," Lydia says, while Stiles' smile grows larger.

"—Mason decided to tell her that he thought they weren't, and it just sorta spiralled into a competition where Liam and Malia bit into a bunch of hardcover books and tried to see how thick the covers were before they started feeling pain."

"See, this is why you can't ever be in class, Scotty," Stiles says, waving the menu at Scott to emphasize his point. "You have to be watching the kids at all times or else they literally eat books."

"Misuse of literality. They didn't swallow," points out Lydia.

"That's a damn shame," Stiles comments, glancing down as Lydia's phone starts buzzing on the table of the diner. She checks the caller ID, then sighs and looks over at Stiles.

"I have to take this."

"Okay," he says pleasantly. When Lydia frowns and gestures at him with her chin, he groans. "Ugh, you want me to get up?" She nods. "Fine. But never again."

He gets up, grumbling all the while, and he thinks Lydia probably purposefully shoulder-checks him as she leaves, saying "Hello?" into her phone in a voice that is far sweeter than anything he has ever heard come out of her mouth.

"Stiles?" Scott says questioningly.

"Yeah, buddy?"

"I'm over here."

Stiles turns his head away from the entryway to the diner, where Lydia is standing in her short skirt and heels, her fingers curled around the ear that isn't covered by the phone.

"Oh. Sorry."

"You guys seriously have to stop this," Scott sighs. "You're just doing it to yourselves, honestly."

"Doing what?" Stiles asks, eyes on the menu even though he most likely has it memorized by now.

"Dancing around each other," Scott says, voice getting more annoyed. "Stiles, you guys flirt with each other so much that it is literally impossible for anybody else to get a word in edgewise."

"Misuse of literality," says Stiles, realizing too late that he's echoing Lydia. Scott throws him a dirty look.

"Stiles."

"Look, I might be flirting with Lydia, but that doesn't mean she's flirting back."

"Right. That's why she's been showing up at this diner every day for the past two months."

"Maybe she likes the food! They do make really good omelettes."

"She comes here to see you," Scott informs him. "That's what's happening right now. That's _literally_ what's happening right now. And yes, that is a proper use of literality."

"Scott, that's just… that's crazy. She doesn't… Lydia's not following me to a diner so she can hang out with me. She comes here to do her homework and I just happen to be here as well."

"So you're going to tell me that you've been sitting here, come rain or shine, every day after school believing that the girl sitting across from you isn't flirting with you at all?"

"It's Lydia."

"And you'd follow her to the end of the planet."

"Yeah, so given that, the diner isn't actually that far to get to spend time with her."

Scott is a heartbreaking cross between sad and royally pissed off, the result of which is him looking like a puppy.

"Look, think what you want, but at least stop telling yourself that Lydia doesn't care about you. Stop thinking that you're a side effect of the omelettes. Because you're not."

"Maybe I'm not a side effect of the omelettes. Maybe I'm… like… a side effect of everybody else in her life being gone. And I'm the guy who's just still here. So it's easier to sit in a booth with me then think about who isn't across from her."

It's weird to see how soft Scott's eyes have gotten, but he's shaking his head at Stiles with this expression that makes Stiles think that maybe Scott knows something he doesn't know. He wants to ask what it is, but the words get stuck in his throat at the idea that there's something to know at all.

"You can convince yourself of anything you want to, but that doesn't mean it's true or even that you really believe it."

"God, are we seriously going to enter philosophy hour now?"

"Philosophically, do you seriously think that Lydia isn't into you?"

Stiles is about to open his mouth to answer, even though he doesn't really know what his answer is going to be, but Lydia arrives back at the table. He shuts his mouth immediately and starts to _stare_ at her, attempting to see if she looks differently from how she did when she left the table. She catches him in two seconds, of course, and frowns.

"What?"

"Nothing. Uh… how was your… phone call?"

"How was my phone call?"

"Yup. Was it good?"

Lydia looks over at Scott for an answer, but he shrugs.

"It was fine, Stiles."

"That's nice. I hope you had some stimulating conversation."

"It was the secretary from my oral surgeon's office calling to confirm my wisdom teeth removal, but yeah. Stimulating."

"Secretaries have lots of good stories to tell," Stiles notes before pausing and rethinking about what she had just said. "Wait. You're getting your wisdom teeth out?"

"That's the hope."

"When?"

"Tomorrow."

"Lydia, you can't!"

"Why not?"

"I did research on it when Scott got his out—"

"Too much research," Scott cuts in, as if that wasn't already heavily implied.

"—and seriously, you could die."

"Do you have so little faith in me that you think I'd get a deathly infection?"

"It's not you I don't trust. It's your gums."

Lydia rolls her eyes.

"Okay, Stiles."

Their waitress comes by. Scott orders three slices of cake, Lydia gets a scone and a cup of tea— Stiles will have to tease her about that later— and Stiles opens his mouth to order but instead finds himself saying,

"Hey, if you want, I can, uh, bring you stuff to eat after your surgery."

"What?" says Lydia, looking up at him from her phone screen.

"You can't eat anything except, like, pudding and ice cream, right? So I can bring you… I dunno, strawberry milkshakes. And that gross tapioca shit that you like. And I can force you to re-watch the first movie in the Matrix trilogy because you probably just weren't in the right mood when you saw it the first time, I swear to god it's incredible."

He realizes too late that Lydia had already said no to Scott when he had offered to do the same thing. She's silent for several moments, and Stiles exchanges an awkward floundering look with the waitress. He opens his mouth to order shepherd's pie with a side of shame when Lydia's voice cuts him off.

"Okay. That sounds good."

Stiles blinks, his eyes snapping away from the waitress'.

"Uh, what?"

"You can bring me tapioca pudding. I'm still debating the Matrix part, but other than that… okay."

"Okay?"

"Okay."

He looks over at Scott, eyes wide, but Scott throws him an 'I-told-you-so-glance' that causes Stiles to briefly consider forcing Lydia to take it back, just so that he can win one for _once_ between the two of them.

But then he thinks about Lydia telling him that he keeps on standing in his own way and making things too complicated. And maybe she hadn't been talking about herself, but when he looks over at her, she's reading the menu upside-down, a determined expression on her face.

Okay, so maybe it wouldn't be so bad if he lost this round to Scott. If Scott's right about this, it's not like Stiles is going to _complain_ or anything.

He wouldn't complain at all.

* * *

 

It's really freaking sunny outside.

The sun is out, and it's so bright that it shines in Stiles' eyes as he drives to the diner, but Stiles doesn't care. He doesn't care that he's squinting, or that the song that's playing on the radio used to make him feel like crap, because here's the thing: it doesn't anymore. He bounces to the music and flips down his visor and hums under his breath as he turns into the parking lot of the diner, not bothering with his turn signal because he never does.

Lydia's car is already there, and Stiles pulls in next to it, smiling at the fact that both he and Lydia drive blue cars. It's cool. It looks like they have weird couples cars, and that makes him want to laugh. When he sees Lydia unbuckle her seatbelt and get out, he does the same, scurrying up to her. She turns around at the sound of gravel crunching under Stiles' feet, and a smile splashes across her face when she sees him. Neither of them say anything until Stiles has walked right up to her, reaching across Lydia so that she doesn't have to open the door for herself.

"Hi," she says breathlessly.

"Hi," he replies, swinging the door open and gesturing to allow her to walk through. Lydia glances at the ground with a smile, then back up at him, and she goes slow enough for Stiles to put his hand on her back as they walk in together.

They go to the same booth every time, and today Lydia leads the way there in her tall heels, her curls bouncing against her back. He hasn't seen her hair this curly in a long time, and it feels like he's being greeted by an old friend from the past, except it's Lydia and she's there, right in front of him, and they had just spent three days lounging on her couch while he played nurse to her and tried not to make fun of her swollen cheeks.

Well, they're not swollen anymore, and when he sits down at their booth across from her, he sees that she's got blush on them. Plus eye makeup and lipstick, which he definitely would have noticed when they were at school. Which means that there is a small, tiny, minescule possibility that Lydia had put the lipstick on just now, before he'd gotten there. She'd put it on for this.

Okay. That's gonna be filed away for later.

(Stiles considers texting Scott about it, but he has a feeling that what would follow would end up being a carefully choreographed "I told you so" dance that honestly doesn't help anything.)

They hadn't talked much today at school, but they had sat next to each other at lunch, and Stiles had felt Lydia's arm brush his multiple times as she had a conversation with Malia and Stiles had a conversation with Scott and Liam. Despite the fact that they had barely said two words to each other, he still feels like he's been hanging out with her all day. But this. This is what he's been waiting for, ever since he left her house last night with a look on his face that was far more cheerful than anything he's gotten used to over the last year.

He's not entirely certain that the small smile on Lydia's lips has nothing to do with the way he had gotten her pain meds and helped make her weird saltwater combination that she had to gurgle— she made him leave the room for that after he attempted to take a video— and the fact that he'd made her soup and let her put her feet on his lap when they were watching 27 Dresses. It could have to do with anything else in the world, of course. But also… not.

"What did you do today?" asks Lydia, looking like she genuinely wants to know, and it makes Stiles' heart beat faster in his chest because she's _leaning_ towards him.

He shrugs noncommittally.

"Nothing."

He probably did something today, but he can't remember anyways, and Lydia laughs through her nose like he's said something funny.

"Me too," she says, throwing what he suspects is a _very_ meaningful glance at the table. "Hi, Janet!" she adds when their waitress comes over. "Vanilla milkshake, please?"

"Sure thing, sweetie. And you?" she adds, looking at Stiles.

"Same," he says. "Plus fries. And Lydia's not allowed to steal them."

"I can't chew anything anyways," she reminds him, waving a hand dismissively.

"You can suck the flavor out of them."

"Like you suck the fun out of stuff?"

He opens his mouth indignantly, but Lydia beams happily and Janet looks at Stiles with an expression that could only be described as pointed as she leaves the table.

"That's just _mean_ ," he complains, even though it honestly doesn't feel bad.

"You know, I've heard that about myself. I've also been called heartless. And the zodiac killer."

"I KNEW IT!" Stiles shouts, way too loud, and several people at the other tables look over at him. He waves at them, and Lydia hides her laughter by reaching into her backpack, looking for some homework to do.

"That's what I want to be when I grow up," she continues when Stiles has finished doing his mental curtain call. "The zodiac killer."

It strikes Stiles, very suddenly, that he doesn't actually know what Lydia really wants to be when she grows up.

"Okay, I know you're majoring in biochem, but what are you actually planning on doing with your life? Do you know?"

"You just want to know so you can figure out how to one-up me for the reunion."

She's joking, but there's a part of Stiles that actually aches at the idea of not speaking to Lydia every day anymore. Of not getting to see her until something arbitrary, like a high school reunion or a wedding of one of their mutual friends. He wants to do everything with Lydia. If these last few days have proven anything, it's that he wants to make her eat her soup and he wants to whine his way through 27 Dresses and he wants her to fall asleep on him like she did the first of three times he tried to make her sit through The Matrix.

"You're going to be too busy and important to come to the reunions."

"No," Lydia says softly. "I'm not going to be either of those things."

"'Course you are." Stiles probably shouldn't brush her words off, but Lydia is always busy and always important, so it's not like he's saying anything particularly outlandish.

"I used to want to be a mathematician. Win a Fields Medal by thirty, contribute to the field… but now it's... I don't look at things the way I used to."

"I know," he says, because he does. He doesn't mean for his voice to come out ragged, but her tone sounds so severe.

"When I was a kid I would sit with my older sister and do math homework with her, and over time I just… I picked it up. She was a senior when we were freshmen, so her homework was always harder than mine, and it was strange that I was better than her at it. When my parents figured out that I could do it, they freaked out. They thought it was amazing. My dad would set me up on the floor with Stef's math worksheets and have me do them without her over my shoulder… then he'd bring me harder ones. And harder ones. And harder ones. And I was really good at it, Stiles. I was good at solving them. It was the first thing that actually, genuinely made me a person instead of a little kid, or a pretty girl, or a redhead. I felt like I had a something."

"You have about twenty somethings."

She smiles fondly at him.

"Well, of course _you_ think that."

"What do you mean 'me?'"

"You notice stupid details about everyone."

His eyebrows shoot up.

"Uh— everyone?"

Right. If by everyone, she means 'Lydia Martin,' because Stiles is pretty sure she's the only human being he's paid attention to since he was eight.

"So at first the math felt good, right?" Lydia says, choosing to ignore his incredulity. "And then my parents made me do it all the time, and the only time they stopped fighting was when they were bragging about how smart I was, and when they finally decided to get divorced I just… I wanted it all to stop."

"And you started pretending you weren't good at math?"

"But I still wanted it to be my career. I just… wanted them to shut up about it."

"So, naturally, you have now decided to not make the thing you're good at your career."

"Well, see, there's the thing. It's not the only thing I'm good at anymore. Or even the only thing I care about."

"Right, right. There's also your love affair with slam poetry."

"I do love me a good coffee house."

"So biochem."

"Biochem," she echoes, nodding resolutely. "I don't know, I just… I realized that I wanted to _help_ people. I don't want to save lives forever like we save lives now. But I want… I want to go to work and know that something I'm doing is actively benefiting someone else."

"So ten years from now, you want to be changing lives."

"Ten years from now, I want to have a doctorate and a medical research lab."

"You want to do research?"

He doesn't know why that makes him feel so happy, but in that moment he has to actively resist the urge to shoot across the table and grab her into a hug during which he would probably try to convince himself that he doesn't want to smell her hair, when, in fact, he does.

"I want to cure stuff."

"You're gonna have a disease named after you!"

"God, I hope not."

"That's awesome," he says, grinning like an idiot. Lydia shakes her head, pulling her chin back as if she's realized something. "What?"

"Nothing. I just… I don't know, I think a part of me still expects people to react like I'm stupid when I say I want to do things like that. I think I still feel like I have to prove myself, or something."

"Hey, I'm the one who told you that you were smart."

"Nope. I already knew."

"Yeah but I _told_ you."

"I've been a genius my whole life, Stiles, this isn't a new development."

"Yeah but, like, I told you."

He's teasing, and she knows, and it feels nice.

"Now I feel like you have to divulge some strange piece of personal information so that I have something to hold over your head."

"Like you don't have a million things to hold over my head already," says Stiles as Janet comes back and brings their food. Lydia takes the opportunity to grab one of Stiles' fries and throw it at his nose.

"Come on. Give me something."

He thinks for a moment, wanting something embarrassing and silly that will make her laugh.

"Um… I cry whenever I hear the song Terrible Things by Mayday Parade."

Actually, now that he thinks about it, that's not really funny. The look on Lydia's face tells him that she understands the significance in two seconds, and Stiles inwardly curses himself at bringing the mood down so resoundingly.

"Stiles—"

"Naw," he says, shaking his head. "It's okay. We should do our homework anyways."

Stiles pulls out whatever English book they're reading and doesn't pay any attention to it. Instead, he listens to the scratch of Lydia's pencil on her paper as she does her math homework. She seems content, her foot swinging back and forth under the table, hitting against the bottom of the booth and creating rhythmic thumps.

" _I think I still feel like I have to prove myself, or something."_

He looks up from his paper, frowning.

"Lydia?"

"Hmm?"

Stiles stares at her for a second, then leans forward, low on the table, and smiles like he's about to tell her a secret as he taps his pencil against her math homework.

"You don't have to. But prove yourself anyways."

* * *

 

Lydia's ear is flat against the table, her eyes are closed, and her fingers are curled around the sleeves of the flannel that Stiles had thrown at her when he'd noticed her shivering. It's been about thirty seconds since he pulled one of her flashcards out of her pile and asked the question, and so far, Lydia has been unresponsive.

"Hey," he says, throwing a balled-up straw wrapper at her. "Answer the question."

"Mmmpph."

He tries not to laugh at the way she sleepily shakes her head back and forth, her nose brushing against the arm of his blue flannel shirt.

"C'mon, the test is tomorrow."

"But."

He pokes her arm, reaching all the way across the table to do it.

"But what?"

"But it's two in the morning. And I'm tired."

Stiles pulls out his phone, scrolls to her contact, and pulls up their text message conversation. He clears his throat, then begins to read in a loud voice.

"'Get your dad to let you stay late. I need to study for my AP bio test tomorrow.'"

"I know what I said," she mutters. "Shut up and let me sleep."

"Of course you know what you said. You know everything in the whole world. So say the answer."

Lydia turns so that her chin is on the table, facing him.

"What was the question again?"

"How does the mitochondria generate most of its ATP?"

"Hydrogen ions are pumped across the mitochondrial membrane and the proton gradient is used to power ATP synthase. Also known as oxidative phosphorylation"

Jesus. He has to stop getting turned on every time she answers a question.

"Yeah. You need more coffee."

"That's definitely not untrue," Lydia sighs, glancing into the empty coffee cup sitting in front of her. "This is your fault. I usually don't need to study at the last minute."

"Um, how is that my fault?"

"You made me rewatch the first season of Pushing Daisies instead of doing my homework. You're a terrible influence."

"Aww, shucks," Stiles says drily. "That's what a guy likes to hear." Lydia frowns at him and hands him another flashcard, then rests her chin on her hands and just stares until he reads it. "What kind of epistasis yields the 12:3:1 ratio of phenotypes?"

"Dominant epistasis," she recites without missing a beat. Stiles throws down the flashcard and picks up one of the waffle pieces on his plate, stuffing it into his mouth.

"Do you actually need to study? You've gotten every single one right."

"You say that, and then maybe the _one_ thing I miss is on the essay portion."

Lydia wrinkles her nose when Stiles starts chewing on one of the chicken nuggets that is next to his waffle on the plate. She thinks he's crazy for eating them together, and she's told him so multiple times, but Stiles likes it. Lydia can just deal with it, because sometimes there's two things that you don't think would be a good combination that actually turn out to be a _perfect_ combination. Like chicken and waffles.

"That's paranoid." She picks up her phone, turns the camera to selfie mode, and shoves it into his face. "Point taken."

"Next question."

"What's the structural difference between nucleotides and nucleosides?"

"The nucleoside is just the base and the sugar, and the nucleotide has a base and sugar and a phosphate group. And what in God's name are you doing?"

"I'm dancing. Clearly."

Lydia looks torn between laughing at him and hiding her face so that she can't see him. And really, she should know better by now, because this only encourages Stiles. He wiggles his shoulders back and forth, then introduces his arms into the mix and sways like an octopus, closing his eyes and mouthing the words to the song.

"You know this song?"

Stiles' eyes pop open.

"What the fuck? Of course I know this song. My mom used to play it all the time."

"And you had to _listen_ to it?"

"Oh yeah. That's what happens when you're stuck in the backseat of the car with zero control over the radio. But at least I learned these smooth dance moves."

"They do seem to go with the song."

"Cheesiest song of all time," Stiles says fondly. "'I want you to shoooow me," he adds, singing along with the chorus. "'I wanna _feeeeel_ what love issss. I knoow you can shooow me.'"

"Please stop."

"I can't hear you, la la la."

"This is actually the worst thing that has ever happened to me."

But she's laughing into the hand that she has raised to her mouth in horror, and Stiles throws Eloise a wink, because she's always the one who puts this song on the jukebox, and he's actually really grateful she'd done it because it means that Stiles gets to do this awesome drum beat with his fork and knife, causing Lydia to laugh harder, her hand pressed against her mouth to stifle the sound.

"You're just saying that because you desperately want to sing along right now."

"No," Lydia says, shaking her head seriously. "I really don't."

He grabs the ketchup bottle and uses it for a microphone for a moment, because it is two o'clock in the morning and he's _tired_ and Lydia is tired too, and they may have had a bit too much caffeine and everything is loopy and strange. Lydia shifts in the booth so that her arms are wrapped around her knee, which she puts her cheek on and then just watches him, seeming exhausted and content. Stiles wants to melt into this moment, with Lydia's small, lazy grin and her sloppy bun and his flannel keeping her warm.

 _I'm in love with you_ , he thinks, but then he keeps on singing, throwing his head back for extra emphasis.

"Has anybody ever told you you're funny?" Lydia asks when the song ends, her words slurring slightly because of how tired she is.

"Not lately," Stiles comments, setting the ketchup bottle back on the table.

"Me neither."

"Well, I think you're funny."

She looks surprised.

"Really?" Stiles just nods. "Well, that's still the worst song ever."

He takes a bite of cold chicken and chews at her in an annoyed manner.

"What did your mom listen to when you were a kid?"

Lydia thinks for a moment.

"Um… Tom Chapin? Sesame Street? Normal kid stuff?"

"No, but when you got older."

"I had an older sister. We listened to her music because my mom was a pushover."

"So… you don't know what kind of music your mom likes?"

There's something sad about the idea of Lydia never being annoyed by her mom's shitty 80's songs. To this day, Scott can't listen to an Aerosmith song without wanting to hit his head against a wall, bless him.

"We watched a lot of her movies," Lydia recalls, shrugging. "Oh, god. When my dad moved out, we watched Dirty Dancing over and over and over again."

"Oh, I watched that once! With… uh, with a girl. Lots of girls."

"You watched it with Scott?"

"We were having movie night."

"And Melissa has the DVD?"

"She sure does."

"You know the dance at the end? The one to Time of My Life?"

"I guess."

"I have it memorized."

He can actually feel his own eyes widen to comical proportions.

"Holy— are you serious?"

She nods, eyes tracing over his face as she takes in his expression.

"Serious as a heart attack."

"How? Why? When? What"

"I just… I used to ice skate, and I took dance classes, and when you're trained it's not that hard to pick up after you watch the movie a few dozen times."

"Oh my god, just when you think you know a person they tell you that they know the Dirty Dancing dance," says Stiles, amazed.

"Exactly. Well, anyways, let's go back to the flashcards."

He pulls them out of her grasp in two seconds flat.

"Um, hey, are you kidding? You're doing the dance."

"Nice try, but no."

"I stayed late to study with you! You owe me!"

"Can I just give you my firstborn instead?" she asks.

"I— well, we'll talk about that later." Lydia chuckles. "Seriously, Lydia, after all that I have done for you, you won't show me the Dirty Dancing dance?"

"What exactly have you done for me?"

"I paid for your coffee."

"We didn't pay yet."

"I _will_ pay for your coffee."

She considers for two seconds.

"Closer, but I'm still going to go with no."

"Come on! I helped you study and I will pay for your next _week_ of coffees and I… I will… um…"

"There's nothing you can—"

"I will show you the video on my phone that Scott made me promise to never show you."

Lydia pauses.

"Interesting. All that, plus the video?"

"Yeah. And you want to see this video. It's _good_."

She thinks for a moment more, then sticks her hand out and shakes Stiles'.

"You've got yourself a deal."

He digs into his pocket, comes up with a nickel, and slams it on the table in front of Lydia, his smile wide with excitement.

"This is Christmas."

"It's February," Lydia says smoothly, looking around the diner to make sure there's nobody else around to see her. They're in luck— despite the fact that this is a 24 hour diner, most people in Beacon Hills don't stay out this late anymore due to the random, undefinable things that happen in their town at night.

" _Christmas_ , I say."

She makes her way to the jukebox and puts the coin into the slot, then hunches forward to punch in the numbers for the song. In a moment, the first swells of the song come on, and Lydia turns around to face Stiles. Her eyes look tired, but then she raises her eyebrows at him and he shrugs, and Lydia's laugh makes all her exhaustion seem to go away. She unzips her boots until she's left in a pair of white socks to go with the green dress that she is wearing underneath the flannel that she's still got on. Now that she's standing up, Stiles can see how baggy his shirt is on her, but when Lydia reaches up and pulls the clip out of her hair, letting it tumble down her back, Stiles decides it's the prettiest he's ever seen her look.

"Well?" Lydia says cocking her head at him. "Are you coming?"

"Er… uhhh… what?"

"I have to lean on your arms to do the footwork," she points out. "It's a partner dance."

When Stiles doesn't budge, Lydia hurries over to him and snatches his hand into hers, then pulls him towards the jukebox. She puts one hand in his, places his other hand on her back, and then curls her fingers around his bicep with the other hand, just before she slowly tilts her head and body all the way back in a half circle, pushing her chest towards his body and exposing her entire neck to him. Stiles swallows. Hard. Then she pulls herself back up quickly, looking up to meet his eyes. He looks down at her with his heart thundering in his chest.

"You ready?" she asks.

"No," he promises, just as the music speeds up and Lydia says, promptly, "Spin."

The skirt on Lydia's dress whirls out as she twirls away from him, then spins back in a second. She puts his hand on her back again and begins moving her feet, staring at them in concentration. Stiles stays completely still, watching Lydia, until she looks up and raises his arm in a symbol to spin her out again. When she twirls back into him, she keeps her eyes on his face, her cheeks slightly flushed with energy. Stiles follows her when she turns her body, until eventually he can't keep up anymore. Then he pulls away, leaning against the wall and watching Lydia dance across the floor, her arms around an imaginary partner, her eyes on the footwork again.

Eventually she stops, beaming up at him.

"And then it goes into the guy's dance solo."

Stiles lets out a low whistle as she curtsies.

"And after that is when the leap happens, right?"

"The leap?" Lydia says, playing dumb.

"Yeah, the one where she jumps into Patrick Swayze's arms."

"Oh, _that_ leap."

"I'm totally strong enough to do that."

"I'm sure you are," Lydia says, starting to move her feet a little bit again.

He thinks she's probably really good, even though he doesn't know much about dancing. But she's Lydia. She's good at everything.

"Oh yeah. I'm just as manly as Patrick Swayze."

Lydia throws her head back as she spins, laughing.

"Okay, Stiles."

He'd be totally indignant if he thought there was any way he could possibly do that jump with her. However, he can't, so he keeps playing.

"Kay, let's go," he says, hitting the flat of his palms against his thighs twice. "I'm ready. Dirty Dancing jump."

He knows Lydia gets what he's doing when she meets his eyes and hers are narrowed a bit, one eyebrow quirked up.

"Let's do it," she agrees, backing up towards the opposite wall. "You ready?"

"Oh, for sure."

Her socked feet brush against the floor as she rushes up to him, his flannel streaming behind her. When she reaches him, she jumps into the air in place twice, laughing, and then pokes him, hard, in the stomach.

"Incredible," Lydia says contently, while Stiles clutches his stomach and groans in agony.

"Ow," he says weakly.

She bites her lip for a moment, then seems to make a decision. She rises on her tiptoes and winds her arms around his neck like she had when they were sixteen and they were two different people, standing together at a dance. The music gets slower for a moment, and they sway slowly in a circle together. When the music speeds up again, but Stiles doesn't pull his arms away from their position on Lydia's lower back, and she stays pressed against his body, wrapped up in him.

"You're really good," Stiles murmurs into her ear.

Everything feels softer, suddenly. Quieter. He can feel Lydia's eyelashes flutter against his shoulder.

"I used to be."

"You still are."

"I'm out of practice."

She sounds so sad, and that's what makes him say it.

"You're perfect."

Lydia breathes out against his neck, and he holds on even tighter.

* * *

 

"This is your problem too, you know," Lydia says, gesturing towards the screen with the piece of strawberry pie that is on her fork. "You have absolutely no way to defend yourself, but you run head-first into unbelievably dangerous situations—"

"— and the result of this is my eventual death, yeah yeah. I know. I'll be fine. I have a baseball bat."

Lydia turns her face away from Stiles' laptop screen long enough to throw him a look of disdain.

"Congratulations on making what is clearly the winner of 'worst argument of the year.'"

"Hey, I already got 'worst plan of the year,' might as well keep going."

"You're sweeping," she says flatly, turning back to the movie. "Okay, seriously, she is you right now. She has absolutely no way to protect herself or protect Peter and she _still_ follows him."

"Doesn't even have a baseball bat," Stiles says, shaking his head sadly. "That's the problem. Also, I don't appreciate you making me the Gwen Stacy of this situation. Who's Peter Parker?"

"Scott," Lydia says, stabbing another piece of strawberry pie onto her fork. "I'd say this is an appropriate parallel, actually."

"But I wanna be Spiderman!"

"You can't. It's my analogy."

"But he's my favorite Marvel character, Lydia, come on."

"I think we can agree that it's probably better that you don't get bitten by a radioactive spider. Just for kicks."

Stiles jabs his index finger against the spacebar, pausing the movie.

"At least admit that my snark levels equal the snark levels of Peter Parker."

"You're not as nice as he is."

"Well, yeah, other than that."

Lydia sighs.

"Okay, Stiles. Fine. You are just as snarky as Peter Parker."

He straightens up.

"Really, Lyds? Do ya think so?"

"Ugh," she complains.

"Also, both of our names have alliteration. I'm just saying. I might as well just _be_ Spiderman at this point."

Lydia unpauses the movie.

"Come on. It's taken us about an hour longer to watch this than it was supposed to."

"It's not my fault you keep pausing it to talk."

"Really? _I_ keep pausing it to talk?"

"That's my story and I'm sticking with it," he says proudly.

"Harry's going to figure out who Spiderman— oh, right, there it is."

Stiles looks over at Lydia, amused to see her eyes fixed on the screen. They've started watching movies when they're at the diner on late nights and don't want to leave yet. He claims that he's too lazy, and Lydia states that she doesn't feel like driving, but Stiles thinks it might be more than that.

In any case, he likes watching movies with her. They race each other to guess what the ending is, and they make bets when they have different predictions for the ending. They make sarcastic comments over the characters, and Stiles usually finds Lydia more entertaining than the actual movie, though she would never believe him if he said that.

After all the shit that they've gone through over the last couple of years, they hadn't had a lot of time to do stupid things like watch movies. It feels good to actually try to catch up to pop culture, and Stiles has been meaning to do this for a while. Having Lydia do it with him is just a bonus.

"Shit, did he have to just grab Gwen Stacy?" Stiles whines.

"It's half her fault for running onto the roof."

"He still shouldn't have taken her."

"Why do they _always_ do that?"

"It's so stupid, using people's friends to get to them."

"Hope she's not afraid of heights."

"Oh, come on, you know she's not, she goes for rides with Peter all the time."

"Does he actually think that he can catch Gwen?"

Stiles pauses, waiting.

"Yup, there it is."

"Impressive," Lydia says, then sighs. "Oh good. She's safe."

"See, but now she's moving again."

"She's just stubborn."

"People like that are _crazy_."

"Now you're just baiting me," Lydia states.

"It's true."

"Well, I'm not taking the bait. Scott will save your ass every single time anyways," she informs him without taking her eyes off of the screen.

"I'm counting on it."

"This set is really gritty and dramatic," Lydia says, sounding thoughtful. "You don't think…?"

It sets in on her face just as the web gets sliced by the clock tower.

"Oh," says Stiles. "Shit."

"No," Lydia cuts in. "It'll be fine. He saves her every time."

"Yeah, but—"

"Oh god, the music."

"The slow mo…"

"No, he got her. He—"

Gwen Stacy's head slams against the ground. Lydia makes an involuntary noise of horror. Stiles can hear glass shifting underneath Gwen, and that's when he gets thrown back to the glass on Lydia's face, his fingertips brushing against her eyelids to try to get it off.

Stiles suddenly can't feel his fingers.

Everything about this scene is too familiar. He curls his hands into fists under the table as his heart beats somewhere within his fingertips. He doesn't know why he can hear it thump, because it feels like he can't breathe. It feels like everything is fading away, leaving his eyes to latch desperately onto the screen where Peter is clutching Gwen's body, brushing back her hair. Pleading with her.

The words and the way Peter breathes and the hysteria that comes with knowing that you could be losing someone that you care about more than you care about anybody. The hopelessness on Peter's face and the limpness of Gwen's body. It's all achingly familiar to Stiles.

Stiles could have lost Lydia. He could have lost her and the scene would have played just like this one is.

He can remember the insane hysteria building up in his stomach as he stared at Lydia's unmoving form. The refusal to believe she was dead; the refusal to entertain the thought that Lydia had gone somewhere that he couldn't easily follow. He hadn't been thinking, at the time, about what would happen to the world if she couldn't be a part of it. He hadn't been thinking that because he had been too horrified to even believe that Lydia could be gone.

Bile rises in Stiles' throat as he listens to Peter wailing over the girl he was in love with. Unlike Lydia, Gwen doesn't start breathing again. And Peter is just as desperate as Stiles would have been. He can't imagine. He can't fathom. He can't— can't— _can't_.

"Jesus christ, _Stiles_ , are you okay?"

He hadn't even noticed Lydia slide into the booth next to him, but she's on her knees facing him. One of her hands is on his back, the other touching his hands, trying to still the trembling there.

"I—"

It's too soon for him to speak; he's still trying too hard to not let any of the tears that have gathered in his eyes fall onto his cheeks.

"Stiles," Lydia says again, and in the next moment, she pulls him against her chest, letting his ear press against her heart and listen to it beating. Lydia slowly rubs her hand up and down his back, and the other hand is gripping his hair tightly, anchoring him to her. "It's okay. Shhh. Shhh, Stiles. Everything's okay."

"Lydia… _Lydia_."

"I know," she says, pulling him closer as he shakes. "I know."

He comes back to her heartbeat first, feeling the way it pulls at him, urging him to keep breathing for her. Next he comes around to his hand on her back, and the way it feels rising and falling under his fingertips. Her hair is what tugs him in next— the way it smells like it always has. The way it feels normal to touch it.

His heart rate slows. Lydia's fingers relax slightly around his hair.

"'M okay," he mutters against her.

"Do you want me to—?"

"Don't let go."

He doesn't care what she knows in this moment.

"I won't," she whispers, her posture sagging. It causes Stiles' head to slide up her body, and he shifts so that his nose is nuzzling into her collarbone, where he can still smell remnants of her perfume where she'd sprayed it earlier that day.

He wonders if she knows what he's thinking about, and if that's why she's stroking his hair so tenderly.

He finally pulls away when he's finished shaking. Lydia takes his face in her hands and checks to make sure he's alright before she slides out of the booth.

"We should, uh, we should go," Stiles says, avoiding Lydia's eyes as he sniffs and swipes his thumb under his nose. "I told my dad I was gonna be home a few hours ago."

"That's fine," Lydia says, voice gentle. "You go ahead. I'll get the check."

He only agrees because he doesn't think he would be able to bear watching Lydia get into her car and drive away from him. This is good. This is what Lydia always clings to— control. He turns his back on her, gathers his things quickly, and walks away, leaving her alone in the mostly empty diner.

But then he's sitting in the front seat of his car and his key is in the ignition and he can't bring himself to drive. Lydia's still in there. She's in the diner, and she's alive. It doesn't matter how many fucked up situations they've been in because Lydia pulled out of all of them and she's _alive_. She's right in front of him with pink cheeks, and she laughs more, and she wants to make a career out of helping people, and _shit_ , he's so fucked. He's so fucking in love with her. He chokes on it every time he sees her face and it fills his lungs every time she speaks to him. He dreams of her and it feels better than anything he's ever dreamt because there's something so real about Lydia's cheek on the pillow next to him, smirking at something he's just said.

Stiles is in love with Lydia in a way that hurts, and maybe it'll never stop hurting, but there's this small chance that it could ache in a way that feels so good that he gets to continue to lose his breath when he looks at her and feel safe even as he falls harder. And he wants that. He at least wants to try for it.

The door to the diner opens, and then Lydia is standing there with her giant purse hitched over her shoulder. She squints in the light of Stiles' headlights, shielding her eyes with her hands to see who it is. They stare at each other for a second. Then Lydia walks up to his window and knocks, waiting for Stiles to roll it down.

"Are you going to be okay to drive?" she asks, and somehow he knows that she was worrying about it in the diner as she paid.

"Yeah," he says, voice dry and cracking. "Yeah, I'll be fine."

"Okay."

She looks like she doesn't believe him, but she takes two steps backwards towards her car, still watching him carefully. She turns around, opens the passenger's side door, and drops her bag into the seat. By the time she's got the door closed, Stiles is already out of his car and is slamming the door behind himself.

"Lydia?" His breath puffs out in front of him as he breathes her name, and when she hears him say it, her head turns to the side for a moment before she closes her eyes. Then she turns more fully to him, looking like she's bracing herself. "Why do you come here every day?"

"Oh," she says, and she wraps her arms around herself, hugging her body against the cold. For a moment he thinks that she's going to hide behind her hair as it falls forward, but then he takes a step closer and Lydia looks up at him in an almost involuntary jerk. Her hair falls back, revealing her eyes as they search his face, and Stiles breathes out shakily.

"I… I was wondering why you come here every day. Because… well… because I never saw you here before that first day, and I didn't come here as much until you started coming here and we started sitting at the same booth and talking and doing homework. And I was just wondering if maybe—"

"I come here to see you." She cuts him off, but he doesn't care, doesn't care at all, because Lydia looks so serious, and her eyes are meeting his. He can see her watching him in the orangeish light of the street lamps that illuminate the parking lot, and then she steps closer and her words set in and he stops breathing for every reason that is good. "I come here because I know you're going to be here, and I want an excuse to see you. To spend time with you. I come here because I wanted… well. I wanted what we have now. And now that we do have it, I don't want to lose it." She swallows. Steps forward. Tilts her chin up defiantly. "Are you okay with that?"

"I come here to see you too," he says hoarsely. "Shit, Lydia, these last three months have been… they've been…"

"For me too," she says, reaching up to touch his cheek for the second time that day. This time, her thumb strokes the apple of his cheek while her eyes dance between his eyes and his lips. And he thinks that maybe she's giving him a hint. He thinks that maybe he should kiss her.

"Lydia—?"

"Yes," she says clearly.

He closes his eyes briefly, squeezing them shut hard. When he opens them and Lydia is still there, Stiles swallows. And he starts to lean down to her.

Stiles' hand comes up to touch her cheek. She leans into him, her hot breath washing across his palm. Lydia waits for him, her face patient, her eyes almost austere. He kisses her left cheek, then her forehead, then her right cheek, and by the time he sets his eyes on her lips, her hands have found the lapels of his flannel and are gripping them tight, pulling him in closer. He concedes easily, letting himself fall forward towards her, his lips brushing lightly against hers without kissing her.

They both startle when Stiles' phone rings deafeningly loud, blaring out the song that he'd specifically picked for his dad.

"Shit," he grunts out, tugging the phone out of his back pocket and answering it hurriedly. "Dad?"

"You said you'd be home two hours ago."

"Yeah, yeah, I'm sorry. I lost track of time."

"Is anything wrong?"

He looks over at Lydia, who is pressed against the door of her car, her expression stunned, as if she's not sure where she is or how she got there. Her cheeks are flaming red, and Stiles thinks that his face must be as well.

"Everything's okay," Stiles assures him. "Like I said I just… lost track of time."

"Well, get your butt back here. You have school tomorrow."

"Okay. Bye, dad."

"Bye, kid."

He's still looking at Lydia when he pockets his phone. He cringes.

"Sorry about that."

"It's okay," says Lydia. They both shift awkwardly. Stiles isn't sure if he should move closer to her again, but she answers the question for him. "Your dad probably wants you home."

"Uh, yeah. He does."

"And I should probably get going too."

"Probably a good idea."

He nods his head a little too hard, and Lydia smiles fondly. She darts forward to press a kiss against his cheek.

"Bye, Stiles," she murmurs. "I'll see you tomorrow."

 _Tomorrow_ , he thinks, watching her get into her car and drive away. _I'll tell her tomorrow_.

* * *

 

Stiles doesn't know how he is supposed to feel in his own skin, but he doesn't think this is it.

Everything is unsettled, like his flesh is stretching across bones that aren't quite his. He looks in the mirror and the face that is in there doesn't belong to him, but he also doesn't know what he's supposed to look like, either. His hands on his own arms and hips and face feel foreign, like somebody else is touching him.

There is a part of him that is screaming to get out, to be unlocked, but Stiles doesn't have access to that piece. He just knows what Scott and Lydia said— that he'd lost himself before, and he'd found his way back. He's hoping he can do it again, because he thinks he would like Scott. He smiles easily, albeit sadly, and a couple of times he's told some jokes that cracked Stiles up, which is difficult to do lately. He feels like everything in his world is falling apart, despite the fact that he doesn't know what he's lost, and it is terrifying because if there are things Stiles should be clinging onto, he doesn't know what they _are_.

His dad says that there's lots of people he really cares about, but Stiles has been spending most of his time with Scott and Lydia. He hadn't really wanted to see anybody at first, but then the two of them had rolled their eyes when he tried to elbow them away, and he'd liked that. At one point, Scott had attempted to back out of his room and Lydia had put her hand on his shoulder and shoved him right back in.

After that, Stiles stopped trying to fight against either of them.

Today, his dad is working and Scott is helping Liam after school, which means that Lydia is on babysitting duty for Stiles. Scott always protests when Stiles refers to it like that, saying that they're just trying to protect him— trying to make sure whoever stole his memories doesn't come back for seconds. Lydia, on the other hand, laughs through her nose, shakes her head, and rolls her eyes. When Stiles asks why, her response is usually "you."

He likes to see himself through Lydia's eyes. She doesn't look at him like he's damaged, and she never stares at him like she's trying to find pieces of who he used to be. Instead, she treats him like he's the biggest idiot alive with a side of tenderness that he thinks must be left over from whatever they were before he forgot everything.

Stiles isn't sure how he felt about Lydia, but he knows bits and pieces that come from random side-comments his dad and Scott make about her. And he knows what he's starting to feel now. He knows that he is addicted to the color of her eyes, and that he's become obsessed with her smile from the few times he's seen it. He's working way too hard to try to figure out if it would be at all possible to make her laugh out loud, because he has a feeling that her laugh is just as gorgeous as her smile.

He glances over at Lydia where she sits in the driver's seat, her posture perfectly straight, her eyes on the road. Usually they go back to his house, but today she had made a different turn without informing him, and Stiles had decided to shut up instead of asking about it. When Lydia pulls in front of a diner three minutes later, she wordlessly gets out of the car. He scampers after her without question.

Lydia holds the door open for Stiles and he passes her into the diner, looking all around it, at the black and white checkered floors and the little red stools lined up at the counter. He walks deeper into the diner and takes in the jukebox in the back corner and the gigantic laminated menus on every table.

Assuming that Lydia wants to sit down and eat, Stiles picks a booth and plops into it. When he looks back up at her, the expression on her face is blank, but her eyes suddenly seem sad.

"What?" he asks her, but Lydia shakes her head, and her eyes clear at once.

"Nothing," she says. "Why'd you pick this one?"

"Dunno," he shrugs. "I like the poster, I guess."

The poster hanging above this particular booth is one for a movie called Charade, an old Audrey Hepburn and Cary Grant film. Stiles isn't sure if he's ever seen it, but he likes the name, for some reason. It seems like a good name.

"Of course you do," Lydia replies, picking up a menu and handing it to him.

Stiles scans it, then flicks his eyes back up at her.

"So," he says. "Scott tells me that I used to have a crush on you."

Lydia's eyes dart to the side, then back to him. Her lips turn down as she tips her head to the side and shrugs her shoulders.

"Crush _might_ be an underestimation."

"How would you estimate it?"

She plucks the menu from his fingertips, scanning it in a manner that he would consider lightly judgemental. Actually, that's how he would describe most of Lydia's facial expressions. It would crack him up more if she wasn't so pretty.

"I don't know. I wasn't privy to your every whim, unfortunately for me."

"That's a damn shame."

"Especially because I'm pretty sure you could've written a book about me," Lydia mutters. Stiles isn't sure if she had meant to say it out loud, but she doesn't seem embarrassed when he catches her gaze.

"So I _was_ into you."

"Maybe," she says, not giving an inch, and he has this odd feeling that she's trying to protect the version of him that Stiles doesn't remember.

"Then I guess the only question is… were you into me like I was into you?"

Maybe the reason he likes Lydia so much is that the old him had been in a relationship with her. Maybe they had been connected like that, and nobody wants to tell Stiles because it would be weird for him to be dating a girl he doesn't know. He gets that. It's not like he's about to force himself on her or anything. But he's definitely, infinitely curious about this girl. There's something about her that just… _digs_ at him. In a way that's simple. In a way that he likes.

"Maybe," Lydia says again, totally noncommittal.

He decides to make an assumption, just to speed things up.

"So we were dating."

"No."

"So we were just friends."

"Also no."

"So we were ice dancing partners who designed our own matching unitards."

"You're definitely getting warmer," she tells him.

"What were we, Lydia?"

"We were just complicated, Stiles."

"Sounds like a fancy word for scared."

It's supposed to come out teasing, but his tone of voice doesn't quite fit, and the stricken look on Lydia's face doesn't either.

"I don't know how to explain it," she finally says. "It was… significant. And tough to explain. And so good that sometimes I think about how I'm going to tell you about it and I feel like nothing I say could possibly be enough to get you to realize what we were to each other."

There's a lump in his throat the size of a boulder.

"So tell me it. Tell me the story."

"From _where_?"

"From the beginning."

"There are eight of those."

"Which one's your favorite?"

"I can't pick. And your beginning wasn't the same as mine. And mine was messy and cowardly and intricate. And I don't know everything about your story, Stiles, because we were getting there. We were getting to the talking. And there's all these small moments that pile into big ones and big moments that didn't feel big until later and everything kept on changing and we kept glancing off of each other at exactly the wrong times, over and over and over again."

It looks like she's getting worked up about it, and for a moment, his chest is filled a love that is too enormous to be directed towards a girl he barely knows. He feels it everywhere— it is violent and invasive and protective. He can feel it under his skin and taste it on his tongue and hear it in the way her name scrapes against his vocal chords.

"Lydia," he says calmly. She stops babbling and looks up at him, eyes wild. "Just… tell me our story."

She starts on the first page. She starts with a little boy yelling at the substitute teachers about a name that's too hard to pronounce and with a little girl who wears white tights and likes pink markers and, according to Lydia, grows up to fall in love with the boy.

She tells the story like it's too late, but Stiles can feel dirt under his knees as he kneels on the floor of a dimly lit locker room and breathes too harshly and squints up at the girl who wore white tights and liked pink markers. And he thinks that, as brilliant as she is, she might be wrong about that one detail.

**Author's Note:**

> I'm rongasm on tumblr and writergirl8 on twitter if you'd like to chat. 
> 
> Also, a comment would make me very, very, very, very happy :) 
> 
> Happy hiatusing to you all! 
> 
> ~Rachel


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